Barcelona 3-1 Manchester United: Barcelona are European Champions

May 29, 2011

The starting line-ups

Goals from each of Barcelona’s front three gave Pep Guardiola’s side victory at Wembley.

Sir Alex Ferguson named his recent ‘big game’ XI – which meant Javier Hernandez upfront with Wayne Rooney behind, and Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick in the centre of midfield. The biggest surprise was Dimitar Berbatov not even being on the bench.

Guardiola was able to call on Eric Abidal at left-back, but not Carles Puyol at centre-back, so Javier Mascherano started in defence after all.

The overall pattern was not completely different from the 2009 final. United enjoyed a good opening few minutes, but were then the poorer side for the rest of the contest.

Barca dominance

There are two ways to consider the game. The first is the obvious approach – Barcelona are clearly the best side in the world, arguably one of the best of all time, and when they are on top of their game, they are unstoppable. It’s an approach that suits everyone – Barca are happy to take the plaudits, United can take the defeat easier knowing they’ve been beaten by a superb side, and the neutral can take pleasure from witnessing such a marvellous performance.

On the other hand, United probably shouldn’t have been dominated to such a large extent. Losing 3-1 is far from shameful, but the overall shots figure (22-4 to Barcelona) and the shots on target figure (12-1 to Barcelona) demonstrate quite how superior Guardiola’s side were. Tactics is not a case of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ depending solely upon the approach, but it’s difficult to argue that United’s tactics helped them compete in this game at all, even when starting from the earlier viewpoint – that Barca are by far the best around.

Hernandez starts

The key decision before the game was whether Hernandez would play upfront, or be dropped in favour of another midfielder. The choice to play him was an attacking move from Ferguson, but the inevitable knock-on effect was that Carrick and Giggs were overwhelmed in the centre of midfield. Wayne Rooney was given the job of tracking Sergio Busquets – a difficult task considering Rooney wanted to be in space when United won the ball – but Busquets started many of Barcelona’s attacks, and was able to find more attack-minded teammates in space very easily.

Hernandez isn’t the consistent threat over the top he should be considering his speed (though he’s obviously had a fantastic first season in terms of goalscoring) and he found himself frequently offside early in the game. Credit should go to Barcelona for that – in fact, in a game where Barcelona were largely able to play their ‘natural’ game, their aggressive offside trap was one of the few key tactical features. It takes a lot of confidence to be able to play so high up the pitch against Hernandez, especially with a back four that had played as a unit for just 60 minutes before this match.

United early pressure

United looked dangerous early on, and much of their good play came down the left, trying to get in behind Alves

All this said, Hernandez did help press Barcelona early on in this match – and Ferguson’s side were helped by the fact that Barca were without Puyol at the back – he’s a better passer than Abidal or Mascherano, and so it wasn’t a disaster if either of them had time on the ball. United settled quickly, won the first couple of tackles against Messi and played long balls, sometimes diagonal, into dangerous areas. Daniel Alves started nervously and Park Ji-Sung was a threat in the opening minutes.

Out of possession, Valencia and Park dropped deep and played narrow, helping United out in the centre of the pitch. The potential problem with Iniesta identified in the preview was part-solved by Valencia playing close to him. This then gave the Barcelona full-backs time on the ball, however, and it was partly because of that freedom that Barca were able to grow into the match and keep possession.

United’s defence dropped deep when Barca kept the ball, and so when it was played forward to Andres Iniesta, his favoured through-balls between centre-back and full-back trickled out of play for goal-kicks.

Space between the lines

The defence playing deep meant that Messi enjoyed too much time on the ball between the lines. It was obvious from the first minute that United’s strategy was to allow Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand to move forward to confront Messi, but this didn’t always work, and Messi got into intelligent positions to cause them problems.

The first goal came about because of space between the lines in two ways – first Xavi Hernandez became free there, and then Messi being unoccupied dragged Patrice Evra towards him, opening up space for Pedro Rodriguez to fire home.

Almost all Barcelona's chances came from passes played to a position on the edge of the 'D'

That summed up United’s failings without the ball, because they were too easily dragged out of shape – although usually in the midfield, rather than at the back. Giggs, Park and Valencia all found it difficult to compete, and Carrick was faced with Xavi and Iniesta coming past him, and Messi in behind him. That’s 3rd, 2nd and 1st in last year’s World Footballer of the Year award forming a triangle around him – he desperately needed help, and United needed another body in that zone.

And yet they managed to get back in it, though it was after the pressing that had worked early on, rather than good work in the midfield. They boxed in Barca when Abidal took a throw in the left-back position, won the ball quickly and then Rooney played an excellent double one-two with Carrick and Giggs, and finished superbly.

Second half

After the break, Giggs and Park were told to switch positions permanently, though they’d sometimes swapped in the first half. The wisdom of this was questionable – yes, United needed more energy in the middle, but Park was guilty of switching off for Aaron Ramsey’s goal recently when pushed into the centre, and when watching the replay for Messi’s goal here, he seemed to have given up off before Messi had struck the ball. That said, as mentioned earlier, it was the centre-backs’ job to come up towards Messi, and they were slow to do so.

The other effect of the switch was Giggs becoming exposed to Alves’ runs, and twice in the first ten minutes of the second half, Alves was through on goal after one of his classic darts down the right – once he shot at Edwin van der Sar, the other time he squared for Messi. Ferguson knew something different was needed in midfield, but switching Park and Giggs was unlikely to be the answer. With three central midfielders on the bench – Darren Fletcher, Anderson and Paul Scholes – he did have options.

Final stages

Messi dribbled past opponents easily in the 'number ten' position

Ferguson waited until the 69th minute to make a change, and that was enforced, as Fabio da Silva was struggling, possibly with cramp. Nani came on, Antonio Valencia went to right-back. Incidentally, it’s not uncommon for Fabio to depart because of fitness problems. He’s started 16 games this season and been removed 10 times, whilst his twin brother Rafael has been taken off in 8 of his last 9 games. These figures include tactical substitutions as well as changes because of injury, but a decent number have been fitness-related, and therefore it was a surprise that Ferguson named no full-back on the bench, with John O’Shea left out of the 18 altogether.

The substitution had little impact on the game, because David Villa soon curled a brilliant shot into the net to put Barcelona 3-1 up, and that settled it. United rarely threatened at two goals down, and Barcelona – particularly Messi – were keen to keep the ball rather than extend the lead.

Conclusion

“We never really controlled Messi,” Ferguson admitted after the game. “But many people have said that. We never really closed the midfield well enough to counter them. We tried to play as near to the way we normally play. For instance, it’s alien to us to try to man-mark players. We tried to play as normally as we can. It wasn’t good enough on the night, we acknowledge that.”

Guardiola was pleased with his side. “We pressed the ball a lot, we were on top of Carrick and Giggs and that shows the quality of our team. You’ll always have problems in the Champions League final but we had less problems than in Rome – we had more chances and we made more of them.

Lionel Messi is the best player I’ve seen, the best I will ever see probably. We have good players but without him I don’t think we’d be able to make that decisive leap.”

As both managers touched upon, there were two key factors – first, United didn’t get to grips with Barca in midfield, and second, Messi was sublime.

In all, thought that was a good game. Both teams tried to play football, it flowed nicely, there was respect between the managers and players.

Scotty on May 29, 2011 at 1:16 am

Definitely. I think Guardiola talked to his players about their conduct, even Busquets limited himself to just one or two sneaky tricks. Really was refreshing after the really bad-tempered Clasico semi-finals.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 1:36 am

Great game for a neutral after the hack/dive fest semi between Barca and RM and the snoozefest between Manchester and Shalke.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 1:41 am

manU pwned!!

WHAT!!!!!!!!! on May 29, 2011 at 6:41 am

Good game!? it was horrendous!!!!!! By Sunday league team would have put a better performance than Man U

That was a horrible game. Manchester put a joke of a lineup out there. RM versus Barca semi was much better if UEFA hadn’t handed it to Barca on a silver platter. Messi is nothing with a good solid defensive midfield on the pitch as was proven against RM. UEFA ruined a classic semifinal by sending Pepe off for nothing and let’s not forget about the 2nd leg as if there wasn’t enough damage in the first.

Barca don’t fool me with their attitude. They are not the best team every they are hands down the most arrogant team ever, starting with god-boy Messi.

jaja on May 30, 2011 at 11:22 am

HAHAHA, I can see how Real Madrid fans are still crying. PLease, when it comes to football, let the adults play, and go to cry any other place. This was a fantastic match between two teams who love football, this time Barça was better, because we are in Barça’s age, maybe next year would be ManU, that is the game. But they try to play football, real football. Please, we do not want to come back to the 80’s, catenaccio, force, and boring games, let’s enjoy passing football!!!

kato on May 30, 2011 at 8:42 pm

Seriously, these Mandriles are still crying so much it even stopped being funny. I can somehow understand a Chelsea fan still having a whine about a penalty, but Madrid? There is no one to blame but your own players and your “brilliant” coach. Buy a mirror, take a good look at yourselves, and get over it already. You can praise yourselves lucky Undiano Mallenco was willing to let you have the CDR.

Cam on May 29, 2011 at 2:22 am

More importantly, United came to play football rather than employ a strategy of kicking, grabbing and obstructing Barca on and off the ball. Their strategy was reflected in the open play and flowing nature of the game. Credit to United for trying to win instead of solely trying to destroy Barca’s game. Their approach may have been doomed but their loss is an honorable one.

Elsa on May 29, 2011 at 2:57 am

And yet they’re losing it…many team try to play football against Barca and none of them come up on top…It’s almost like if you want to beat Barca you have to either play negative or brutal football

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 3:04 am

Arsenal at the Emirates?

Victor on May 29, 2011 at 3:20 am

False.

Barcelona’s conduct is fine against every team in the world except Real Madrid. After La Manita, El Clasico will feature hacking and diving until Mourinho or Guardiola leave their posts.

Culer on May 29, 2011 at 4:48 am

ONLY Mourinho, Pep has nothing to do with it, he just told his players to use The special five’s approach against him which is normal. Every coach would do the same against these portuguese crybaby

lol on May 29, 2011 at 6:59 pm

wow, so it’s mourinhos fault when barcas players dive?

is he also responsible for all the civil unrest in spain at the moment? or how about the recent earthquake in japan? is that on him as well?

Culer on May 30, 2011 at 2:36 am

His players dive and cheat so why Barca can’t employ the same cheating tactic? he was simply beaten by his own weapon. As for the rest of your comment, well… I do understand you’re trying to be funny but you gotta learn a lot

Anonymous on May 31, 2011 at 11:35 am

yes lol it is maurinho’s and RM players’ fault, irrespective of how ridiculous you’ve tried to portray it.

It is a fact for everyone to see. Against other teams in every match Barca plays their style, little or no mimicking, no dives etc., by and large clean. In fact, the CL Final against Man U is a perfect example. They won superbly without cheating on any level, by pure domination and playing stylish football. But when it is obvious that a certain coach sends out his players with the sole plan to consistently physically beat up their opposition and try to get away with it (cheating), it is perfectly normal (as a counter-tactic) to provoke them to be sent off by diving and mimicking (cheating as well). If your brilliant self-proclaimed ’special one’ had actually done anything special, especially with the abundance of talent and money at his disposal, then RM perhaps would have beaten Barca (as some Barca fans including myself somewhat expected, especially at a time when Barca’s form was low and hit by many injuries).

so stop whining and except the reality: Teams like Barca and Man U (and few others) plays great football (winning with style) whilst more expensively assembled teams with psychotic coaches like real madrid play negative destructive football without much success at all. This is NOT debatable. These are FACTS. Check Barca’s success while playing attractive attacking football. Check Man U’s success while playing attarctive football. Check AC MIlan’s success while playing stylish football. Check all that against what negative boring destructive teams have achieved (whether at club stage or world stage). yes, inter milan and greece comes to mind, but how often compared to really true footballing teams or nations? SO just accept the facts, stop crying, and respect football for what it is.

There was a time when real madrid played superb football and achieved phenomenal success (most recently when Del Bosque was in charge for 4 seasons, 1999-2003, won 2 leagues and 2 CLs and a few other relatively unimportant cups, etc). At that time, I, even as Barca fan, admired and respected RM and its coach. You cannot say anything else – it’s an open fact, the way they played and how brilliant they were. However, your stupid club and president fired that actually brilliant man (del bosque) and replaced him with a succession of unsuccessful coaches. Ever since with all the talent it has been largely a failure. Even with the so-called Special One’s first season. If Mourinho fails to dislodge Barca next year, it will re-confirm 2 things: 1) real madrid’s philosophy is and has been wrong for almost a decade now, especially with Perez in charge, and 2) for all his successes and achievements, Mourinho’s reputation still far exceeds his actual skills!

Fizan on May 31, 2011 at 11:53 am

Yes, lol, it is maurinho’s and RM players’ fault, irrespective of how ridiculous you are trying to portray it.

It is a fact for everyone to see. Against other teams in every match Barca plays their style, little or no mimicking, no dives etc., by and large clean. In fact, the CL Final against Man U is a perfect example. They won superbly without cheating on any level, by pure domination and playing stylish football. But when it is obvious that a certain coach sends out his players with the sole plan to consistently physically beat up their opposition and try to get away with it (cheating), it is perfectly normal (as a counter-tactic) to provoke them to be sent off by diving and mimicking (cheating as well). If your brilliant self-proclaimed ’special one’ had actually done anything special, especially with the abundance of talent and money at his disposal, then RM perhaps would have beaten Barca (as some Barca fans including myself somewhat expected, especially at a time when Barca’s form was low and hit by many injuries).

so stop whining and except the reality: Teams like Barca and Man U (and few others) plays great football (winning with style) whilst more expensively assembled teams with psychotic coaches like real madrid play negative destructive football without much success at all. This is NOT debatable. These are FACTS. Check Barca’s success while playing attractive attacking football. Check Man U’s success while playing attarctive football. Check AC MIlan’s success while playing stylish football. Check all that against what negative boring destructive teams have achieved (whether at club stage or world stage). yes, inter milan and greece comes to mind, but how often compared to really true footballing teams or nations? SO just accept the facts, stop crying, and respect football for what it is.

There was a time when real madrid played superb football and achieved phenomenal success (most recently when Del Bosque was in charge for 4 seasons, 1999-2003, won 2 leagues and 2 CLs and a few other relatively unimportant cups, etc). At that time, I, even as Barca fan, admired and respected RM and its coach. You cannot say anything else – it’s an open fact, the way they played and how brilliant they were. However, your stupid club and president fired that actually brilliant man (del bosque) and replaced him with a succession of unsuccessful coaches. Ever since with all the talent it has been largely a failure. Even with the so-called Special One’s first season. If Mourinho fails to dislodge Barca next year, it will re-confirm 2 things: 1) real madrid’s philosophy is and has been wrong for almost a decade now, especially with Perez in charge, and 2) for all his successes and achievements, Mourinho’s reputation still far exceeds his actual skills!

Loco Wu on May 29, 2011 at 5:23 am

I do not believe there was any need to notify the players about their conduct for this game especially when the opposable team avoids playing “Jurassic Football.”

lol on May 29, 2011 at 7:01 pm

and look what happened to them, they lost 3 – 1, with only one shot on target. if you want to show me a way to beat barca without playing negatively I’d like to see it.

omarlittle on May 30, 2011 at 11:27 am

Then loose, and wait to Barça’s era passes, as other team in history.
I am sorry but I am not going to defend negative football. If this is what you want, a team that spends 300 million € every year to play negatively OK with you, I am not on tha. Sorry.

Kevo on June 1, 2011 at 1:36 am

Well… if you watched the CL Group Stage, Copenhagen managed to nulify Barca’s movement. Copenhagen, which is in the Dutch League. How did they do so? quick wingers and tons of pressure.

Shakhtar Donetsk managed to play Barca’s weakness but their forward line was wasteful. They had an incredible counter and in less than 1 second managed to play the ball from their half to Barca’s half. They pressure and transition from defense to offense rather quickly using the pace of their wingers.

There are ways to beat Barcelona without hacking and slicing.

ThinkingLateral on June 1, 2011 at 9:44 am

Arsenal at the Emirates.

barcaman on May 29, 2011 at 1:28 am

You should put Guardiola on the top of the site, he deserved it

sic on May 29, 2011 at 1:50 am

Definitely, a picture of Guardiola and Ferguson shaking hands after the match would be great in the header.

WafflingWenger on May 29, 2011 at 2:00 am

I don’t know, the ‘Zonal Marking’ typeface is all too close to Barca colours as it is!

If you put Pep up there alongside it people will start thinking it’s a Barca fan site! (which it probably is anyway =D shhh!)

Sean on May 29, 2011 at 6:54 am

Leave the “Walley with the Brolley” alone on the site picture. Hearing him on TalkSport talk so smuggly about how Fergie figured out how to stop Messi and Barca was ridiculous.

Dan on May 29, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Actually I think ZM’s a Gooner. Arsenal is his most covered team by a fair margin. Also in the comments to one of his early posts (Arsenal 0-3 Chelsea from last season) he (sort of) let it slip. It’s a great credit to his professionalism that he has never done it again and people accuse him of being everything else.

To start Giggs-Carrick axis against the likes of Xavi, Iniesta, and Messi was suicidal. But credit to Ferguson because if I were a coach, I would not have the guts to use that kind of strategy.

I wish United still have Giggs-Scholes-Keane-Beckham axis in midfield! Their midfield would not be so overran, and with powerful striker pair like Rooney-van Nistelrooy upfront to receive long balls and put pressure on the shaky Mascherano (but any idea why Mascherano started over Puyol? that was brave decision from Guardiola); that could be interesting.

One player United desperately needed to win the game: PEPE

Culer on May 29, 2011 at 4:50 am

Pepe, Keane, Do Jong and all the arseholes, can’t you just play football instead of attempting to kill somebody ?

jpradana on May 29, 2011 at 9:25 am

Thats why there is a person known as referee on the field

Culer on May 29, 2011 at 9:33 am

yup but when he DESERVEDLY sent the psychopath from Maceio (aka Pepe) off they yell

Chait on May 29, 2011 at 9:58 am

MUFC lack a natural destroyer…Maybe Fletcher, but he wasnt fully fit.

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 11:24 am

Your Giggs-Scholes-Keane-Beckham midfield would have been overrun, too. Because that is still only two centrals. Barcelona play with basically 4 central midfielders (Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi).
You need three centrals, plus two wingers that are willing to defend, plus a striker that is willing to occupy Busquets. In that way mourinho’s approach was correct in the semis. Although he forfeited both matches the moment Pepe was sent off.

jj on May 29, 2011 at 12:29 pm

pepe?

did they really need a red card to make themselves feel better about the loss (real madrid style)?

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 3:53 pm

Oh yes if Pepe were in a Man U shirt last night he would have made a big difference.In the UCL semi final clasico first leg, Real were still even with Barca until Pepe got sent off – thanks to Dani Alves acting as if Pepe broke his leg whereas Pepe won the ball cleanly, something the obsessively pro-Barca media outside Madrid would not or hardly report.And Pepe was crucial in stopping Barca in the CDR final and the return clasico in the La Liga

but yeah it’s easier to believe in roncero’s manipulated vid where pepe didn’t even touch Alves, easier to deal with the loss amiright ?

Footballfan on May 30, 2011 at 7:01 am

@Culer
Pls use you head first before you ask me to use mine.

Real’s video in no way was fabricated. I’ve seen your link clearly. Look at Alves’s behaviour when he was tackled. Compare that to Nani when he was tackled by Carragher, which left a really serious injury. If Alves was really hit as hard as he claimed, why was he able to flip about the pitch THREE TIMES? Does that look like he’s really in pain? I don’t think so. I call that oscar acting.Whereas look at Nani when Carragher tackled him leaving a scar. Did he flip about the pitch THREE TIMES?
Keep in mind that Pepe said that the tackle could have left a scar. The intensity was of the tackle by Pepe was supposed to be as hard as Carragher on Nani.

Footballfan on May 30, 2011 at 4:54 pm

I mean it should be “…Alves said that the tackle would have left a scar…”

LaneCruiser on May 29, 2011 at 1:19 pm

If you are saying Pep did not do anything innovative, then I would go on and say Sir Alex made a mistake in his strategy instead.

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 5:42 pm

SAF doesn’t have a pacey destroyer.
The midfield is just not enough, and Hernandez and Rooney didn’t contribute much defensively.

omarlittle on May 30, 2011 at 11:48 am

Pep did a lot of things innovative on saturday, and this and last year from the first season (theone in which he won 6 cups). First, in 2009, Messi played in right side, he put him in the middle. Then he opened spaces for The strikers (Henry and Etoo) (and so Barça won 2009 final). After that and once the teams had found out how to stop Messi in the middle, he put messi going down, so the central deffenders could not going after him. So Mou found the way to stop that (Pepe), and brutal fuutbol, and pray for 0-0. Summarizing. The only way to stop the 3+1 (Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta +Messi) is playing with no striker, 4 defenders, 5 in the middle, and 1 to stop busquets-pique, and pray for the 0-0, as Mourinho has done a few times. but even with that, Pep takes more risks, puts Alves in the middle and defend with 3, move villa or pedro to the middle with a kind of 3-5-2…
Pep is a genious, It is the difference between this Barça, and The Rijkaard’s or Crujff’s. Pep in undoubtly the #1 of tactic and mentallyty of this moment.

DOF on May 30, 2011 at 10:51 pm

Actually it’s not innovative at all.

When playing for Ajax and Holland, Cruyff did the exact same thing as Messi (and he wasn’t the first to do this).

The only difference is Busquets as a DM/ Anchorman as opposed to Neskeens who was a CM.

The Busquets dropping between the 2 CBs while both fullbacks push at the same time is new to the total football Ajax/Holland pattern, but not that new, as Mexico used this since the 80.

omarlittle on May 31, 2011 at 8:37 am

@DOF. There is just a few ways to innovate in football today.¿Maybe play without goalkeeper?
I ment Pep Guardional innovated from his original team in 2009 when he won the 6 cups with the 4-3-3.
Of course he is not inventing football… but he has the hability to read the opponents and deppending on that introduce slight differences in the team, not big changes, that make the difference.
And he do that knowing the players availables.

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 8:39 am

ZM, I think Man U, despite not winning the game played quite well whereas Barca looked a little off and blunt. Leo Messi was unable to put in crucial through passes or make crucial runs he usually does, despite scoring a goal. Park and Antonio Valencia plus Vidic and Ferdinand were constantly all over him. Iniesta’s killer passes were frequently intercepted and Villa and Pedro had problems breaking into United’s area throughout the game despite Pedro getting into good positions a few times.I think that the Barca players who should be the real heroes should be Busquets, Pique and Mascherano,who put up a solid defensive show instead of Iniesta, Messi,Pedro or Villa who looked blunt,compared to their usual La Liga standards. United’s tactics, on the other hand were pretty decent. Fletcher couldn’t start due to suspect fitness after a virus but I felt that Giggs Carrick midfield combination did a decent job in breaking up Barca’s passing game,intercepting Barca passes. The fact that Barca had to rely on half chances constantly showed that they have problems breaking into United’s area,with Messi and Villa scored through half chances.What are your views on this?

Please respect my opinion nck just as much as you want me to respect yours and avoid such sarcasm.Or are you just a troll?

blunt on May 29, 2011 at 6:48 pm

It’s hard to see where you’re coming from when Pedro, Messi, and Villa all scored (in that order) and when Messi routinely dribbled around United players. They’re finishing wasn’t perfect, but that’s why the score wasn’t 5-1 or 6-1, Barca created a plethora of chances and Giggs and Carrick were completely invisible (Xavi was masterful).

Footballfan on May 30, 2011 at 4:49 pm

Blunt, on the flip side it wasn’t so much of poor finishing by Barca but more of the numerous well timed tackles by the United players that prevented Barca from scoring more

faker on May 29, 2011 at 12:17 pm

well, it would have been around 9-1 if Barca actually played well last night…

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 1:53 pm

I’m fully aware. But what I’m trying to highlight is wht Man U got right. I’m pretty sick of this ‘Barca praising’ thing I’ve been fed by Sky’s commentators and the press.

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 2:10 pm

Manu (Ferie) did not get much right except that Vidic, Rio, and Rooney played rather well, individually.
Manu played a formation 4/4/1/1 that helped Barca a lot. Hernandez was hardly involved when Barca had possession. And that was most of the time, especially after the first 15 mins.
Agree with you that Barca strikers looked ‘blunt’ compared to laliga standards. But that is mostly due to the fact the the laliga standard does not feature CBs such as Vidic and Ferdinand.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 6:18 pm

Nemanja “let me grab my balls rather than close down Messi” Viduc?

kenthefan on May 31, 2011 at 9:14 am

ManU did what it could with what it had. Some tackles, some interceptions but you only have to look at number of successful passes, shots on target and number of corner kicks to nullify whatever you said in the first statement. I think van der sar was man of the match for ManU.

Is there a site which shows how much time the ball spent on which area of the pitch, and who had the ball at that time?

Footballfan on May 31, 2011 at 6:03 pm

@kenthefan

I don’t really think statistics such as shots on goal,number of corners or successful passes should only be used to determine who is the better team.Overall performace should be used as a gauge.

Arsenal in some games, for example dominate the stats in shots on goal, number of corners and successful passes. But did they always win? No. That’s because they were unable to put in the killer pass in the final third or put in poor half chances which get deflected for corners or just end up in the goalie’s hands.

I agree that Barca is more skillful than Arsenal but my example is to show the limitations of such stats.

In truth,Barca had a higher completion pass rate,but were largely unable to put in killer through passes. Compare that the number of killer through balls against Real in the 5-0 clasico, the number is much lesser, which is due to the defensive performance Man U put in, constantly intercepting these through balls.

sic on May 29, 2011 at 2:07 pm

This is truly a bizarre comment, proving yet again that reality is variable.

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 3:43 pm

Sic, my comment may be bizarre but if you watch the replay with my comments in mind, you will see where I’m coming from

Riccardo on May 29, 2011 at 7:56 pm

Listen, we respect your opinion but do you honestly think that? Barca were magnificent last night, even in a legendary performance the occasional through ball will be intercepted, Vidic and Ferdinand aren’t that bad.

Qwe on May 30, 2011 at 12:38 am

Yes, the original comment is a bit silly…

Footballfan on May 30, 2011 at 11:31 am

@Riccardo

I’m just trying to put things in perspective, looking beyond Barca’s beautiful football. Why don’t you watch the replay instead and do a careful analysis of the final and compare it to Barca’s 5-0 trashing of Real? Maybe you can see what I’m trying to hit at.

@Qwe

If you think my comment is a bit silly, pls watch the replay of the game first and tell me how I was being silly

MMT on June 2, 2011 at 1:51 am

Footballfan–

I did watch the game and the replay. I also watched various individual breakdowns (Xavi’s passing, all Messi’s touches, etc.). What we have here from FCB is A-, and what you are talking about is the minus.

The best breakdown video shows all the Xavi/Iniesta combinations. Watch carefully–not only how they manage to keep possession, but how time after time, MU’s shape goes to pieces–Giggs steps too high up the pitch, Park or Carrick gets drawn out of the center, so MU’s 4411 (442) starts looking like 4@#$%#$#2. And from this Barca created a bunch of half chances.

A better night of finishing and the bottom line would have been 4-1 or 5-1. And credit goes to MU for playing narrow, maintaining shape, and quickly and efficiently stuffing the six-yard box. Note: no goals from here at all. But the catch is just as obvious, and is probably what FCB discussed at half-time: that MU was not able to press or disrupt just outside of the box. Again–go watch the breakdowns. Simple one and two-touch passing to breakdown MU’s midfield–game over.

I would also suggest that you watch the replay to see what MU actually created, which–apart from their lone goal–was basically nothing, until it was 3-1 and Barca started protecting their lead.

FCB’s 5-0 v RM was perfection, but also a one-shot deal. 3-1 v MU was classic, poised, thoughtful football played against the second-best team in Europe, one set-up for defending and hitting hard on the counter. Watch the replay.

Footballfan on June 2, 2011 at 8:59 am

@MMT

I agree. Man U’s attack that night wasn’t the attack that dumped Chelsea and Schalke out of the champions league. It was apparent that barca upped their game in the final as compared to the last few games.

Pique and Mascherano clearly did their homework on Chicharito, sitting deep against them and playing him offside. Abidal and Alves were unusually cautious, sitting deeper and letting Antonio Valencia and Park run at them, soaking up their attacks. Clearly they had the Copa Del Rey final in mind where they were exposed down the flanks.

But overall as what Rio Ferdinand said, Man U had a good shot but the better team won. Man U’s tactics shouldn’t be blamed by anyone either – they had to make use of whtever resources availabel, especially since Darren Fletcher had to sit out as his fitness was still uncertain after the virus.

David on May 30, 2011 at 8:30 am

Barcelona had been slightly out-of-form for a while in La Liga, actually, and this game marked a return to that form. They started out a bit rough, but soon played their way into a rhythm. They found their fall form and then some, IMO, and this match was more impressive to me than the 5-0 Clasico on November 29.

I’m not sure what you mean by “half chances,” because there were a lot of near misses that were golden chances. I’m thinking of the brilliant run of play from a free kick that just missed (and I’d have to re-watch to give you more specifics here), and Villa’s cross that Messi missed by inches as another.

Barcelona did seem to take more long range shots than they usually do, but I think they took them because there was space to take them.

Footballfan on May 30, 2011 at 11:36 am

“Half chances” meaning shots taken from outside the penalty area. If you would observe in UCL and La Liga matches, Barca would start resorting to half chances when they have problems breaking down opponent defences, especially opponents that defend very deep.

footballrules on May 31, 2011 at 11:06 am

Your errors are: Assuming that “half chances” is bad

With MU tight defense why shouldn’t Barca go for “half chances?” If the doors are close, why shouldn’t I try the windows to get myself inside the house?

You seem to think that such tactics (“half chances”) are not honorable ones and one should always try to break the defence (or, per my illustration, break the doors and don;t bother going through the windows). That’s not playing smart at all.

Footballfan on May 31, 2011 at 5:26 pm

@footballrules

In no way am I saying that half chances is bad. Half chances are 100% honourable tactics and some beautiful goals are scored through half chances.

However, when I commented on the half chances, I was commenting with Barca’s UCL semi final second leg match against Inter Milan where Barca had to resort to half chances to get a goal after failing to break into the Barca penalty area.

I mentioned half chances to highlight my point that Man U did a decent job against Barca’s attackers,forcing them to look for alternatives, not to criticise a perfectly honorable tactic as dishonorable

matt on May 30, 2011 at 10:09 pm

Barca created more chances against Man U than they did against Madrid in the 5-0. Pedro missed the first chance of the game when the ball was centered to him and VDS was out of position, Pedro missed the chance off the terrific free kick play, Villa squared to Messi when he should have shot and Messi then missed, Messi played Villa through and Rio made a great block. VDS made one spectacular save on Xavi’s rocket, three great saves on Messi Alves and Afellay, and a few good catches on Iniesta shots from outside the box. Creatively, Barcelona were spectacular, and they had three great finishes to boot. However, Rio had a good game in defense, Vidic was decent (especially considering that he struggles to deal with dribblers), and VDS made some good saves (bar his poor positioning for Messi’s goal, he had a good game). If it weren’t for those three, the scoreline would have been outrageous, as the rest of United’s team were ludicrously indisciplined when Barca had the ball.

hassan on May 31, 2011 at 6:17 am

i thought barca playes were very tired… especially messi he looked very tired during last fews games before end of the league… pep rested them…

omarlittle on May 30, 2011 at 12:01 pm

Come on!!! 22 oportunities against 4, 12 shoots on target against 1 (and offside!!). I don’t want to talk about Messi’s driblings or % success passing of Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets.
Anyway the feeling was that Barça did what he wanted from minute 10 to 90. It is hard to take for anyone that is not Barça’s supporter, or someone who wanted an equal match, but that is the truth.
Maybe you are right, if they could finished better that they did, the score would have been 5-0, 6-0… (United goal was offside)

Footballfan on May 30, 2011 at 4:46 pm

@omarlittle

Instead of stating the number of shots Barca had compared on Man U,why don’t you focus on the % of Barca passes intercepted or the number of timely challenges the United players make on Barca that night which is quite a lot. That would put a more even perspective to the game, which is what I’ve been trying to do all this while.

Anyway, but sometimes sports are not fair enough with statistics, and the numbers does not represent the feeling of the game. Saturday’s was one of that matches in which is easy to say who is the winner. If this were boxing, there were no doubt (even if this was not a KO).
“%Passes intercepted?, timely challenges?…” mmmm… These are no arguments, Barça is a offensive team, and a defensive team playing offensive. I mean, they preffer to lose the ball moving forward to be able to press in oponent side. SO they try and try and try…. and if Messi’s dribling misses doesn’t matter go and press the defender, and likely you will get even a better oportunity (e.g. 3rd goal).
I am sorry but those arguments you are deffending are not very solid.
I am agree that this was not the best match of FCB. Maybe the best one was the 5-0 against RM this season. That was perfection. No weakness, no chances to the oponent, every pass was a chance… But it is not the same, this is a final, and ManU is a better team, maybe one of the best finals I have ever seen, not the most dramatic, sure.

Footballfan on May 31, 2011 at 5:41 pm

@omarlittle

My objective of mentioning the %passes intercepted by Man U and timely challenges against Barca is to highlight my point in my original comment further up in this page that Man U were not as bad as many would have said,and they did a fairly decent job against Barca, though in attack they were not the same force in attack that beat Chelsea and Schalke on the way to the final.

And I don’t see how the arguments of timely challenges and %passes intercepted by Man U isn’t a strong argument.

Maybe you should keep in mind that in the La Liga not many teams put in these type of challenges put in by the United players, especially Vidic,Ferdinand,Fabio,Park and Antonio Valencia.Even in the Rome final I only remember United putting in only a handful of such tackles, as compared to the 2011 final where these challenges were made throughout the game.

Footballfan on June 1, 2011 at 3:30 am

And just to add on to what I said,i don’t think Barca prefer to give away the ball just to press and win it back. Guardiola has often emphasised the need for Barca to win the ball. The pressing only comes in when they lose the ball.

Honestly I don’t think it is really intelligent to lose the ball just to press the opponent to give it back to you…..

Agree on Busquets, he was superb. Although thought Pique was exceptional.

Tilemaxx on May 29, 2011 at 1:12 am

He made some good interceptions and passed the ball really well. United lacked bodies in midfield, a destroyer type like Fletcher, thus giving space/time to Busquets to pass.

Starting Hernandez was a terrible mistake from Sir Alex, i think he didn’t learn much from 2009 final.

KJK1LL3R on May 29, 2011 at 1:24 am

I agree, Ferguson clearly didn’t know what he was talking about when he said he knew what went wrong in Rome 2009, it should have been a 4-6-0 formation with Carrick, Fletcher & Anderson in the centre and Rooney in a false 9 role flanked by Park & Valencia. I think some people said that it was a good idea to play Carrick and Giggs in the centre to make sure Utd kept the ball better, but lets be honest, no matter who is in there, Barca will dominate possession and press high so Utd needed high energy players to compete and upset Barcelona’s rhythm. I think its also a silly excuse for people to say that this is not the way of Utd, as we have seen them play like this for years against Arsenal.

david on May 29, 2011 at 3:53 am

Absolutely, you can’t play against Barca with Carrick and Giggs in the midfield.You need at least one stong DM such as Pepe or Keane (although retired long ago). Neither of these two is a natural DM. ManUtd needs to buy a top class DM before the season starts. They have never replaced Keane. Somehow EPL teams ignore the role of a true DM but in the European stages, a top DM is a must.

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 8:22 am

Darren Fletcher wasn’t played because he just recovered from a virus and his fitness may still be suspect. Many will say if only Fletcher played but a I don’t think a Darren Fletcher with suspect fitness due to the recent virus will impact the game much.

ormishen on May 29, 2011 at 1:33 am

I disagree. Rooney basically works as a destroyer but further up the pitch. There is a lot of “Gattuso-ness” to his play.

WafflingWenger on May 29, 2011 at 2:03 am

Only in terms of hot air!

kyl on May 29, 2011 at 3:36 am

Agree with waffler, examine the difference between what Busquets managed to do in that space and what Rooney managed to do in that space. Just because you run around doesn’t make for efficient and effective play.
Yes rooney scored, but Busquets did his job exactly as he has explained it. He isolates one forward for the CBs to manage (Hernandez), while maintaining possession when he gets the ball. Compared to Rooney he was tasked with linking play as Man U break out, you would have to say Busquets clearly performed his role more effectively.

ormishen on May 29, 2011 at 2:47 pm

I would say that normally Rooney does a good job at this. Though admittedly he and the rest of United couldn’t cope with Barca.

bobeto on May 29, 2011 at 1:14 am

I thought Busquets was man of the match. I watched the second half on ITV1+1 and the space Rooney left him in was extraordinary considering that he was (I assume) detailed to track him.

Busquets was like an octopus when Barca were out of possession and the calmest man on the stadium when they did hold the ball: all summed up in him winning the ball back and providing the assist for Villa’s goal. An exceptional player.

Tilemaxx on May 29, 2011 at 1:18 am

For me, he was. In the second half he dominated Rooney, forcing him dropping deep several times to find an unmarked player.

Messi did well too, he dictated extremely well, especially when Utd defended deep.

matt on May 29, 2011 at 1:35 am

Rooney should never have been put in that position. He’s not a central midfielder, he’s a roaming forward, and couldn’t be expected to simply stay on Busquets for 90 minutes. Considering that Giggs was awful, Carrick was dealing with 2 superb creators, and Valencia’s only contribution was tactical fouling, Rooney was United’s only source of creativity (apart from a few reckless runs from Evra, which could have been punished severely). He needed to be in space for United to have any offense at all. Once they went down again, he had to drift off Busquets to find space, opening the midfield even more. I vehemently argued against the 4-4-1-1 before the game, and felt that the scoreline actually flattered United. All three goals resulted from space immediately in front of the center backs, where Fletcher or Anderson should have been.

dSquib on May 29, 2011 at 2:04 am

Why not swap Park and Rooney from the off? If Park is the best defensive weapon for United, should Busquets be considered more of a priority than Alves, though Rooney *could* do a decent job there. Park was certainly good in that role against Pirlo.

Otter on May 29, 2011 at 2:32 am

Well put. I hadn’t seen Valencia lately, but lots of previews said he’d been great and that he would cause Barca trouble. The only trouble he caused was the many fouls he committed (how did he escape with just one yellow?) The one cross I saw him make was wildly overhit.

3-1 was very flattering to ManU, as the shot and on-target numbers indicate, but I’m not sure Fletcher and Anderson would have made much difference. What little control ManU had of the ball was from Carrick. Trading that for more defense at the top of the D might have prevented the Messi and Villa goals, but kept ManU from creating anything at all.

The off-season leaves all kinds of questions for Ferguson. Their inconsistency away, the need to replace Scholes and Giggs and Van der Sar (and surely Evra, completely out of his depth here), all have to be addressed. In the meantime, Guardiola will look to upgrade and back up the finest side ever, adding a fullback and a striker, selling Bojan, and working Thiago Alcantara into the midfield.

Xavinesta on May 31, 2011 at 9:53 pm

Totally agree! Busquets was my man of the match too!

He for me was the one who played his role to perfection in this crucial game, a role whose significance most people do not plainly see or easily overlook even when they see it…

WafflingWenger on May 29, 2011 at 1:56 am

Jeez I’m not sure about all of this Basquets praise. He had a great 2nd half to be sure, but he started very poorly and struggled to assert himself on the game. His role becomes a very easy one to play when you’re behind a dominant midfield and with a fatigued opposition pressing game in the second half.

ManUtd were very poor in defending up front. Hernandez and more importantly Rooney refused to pressure beyond the first 10 minutes. This meant that ManUtd couldn’t deal with both the Alvez threat and the deep-building CM threat simultaneously and as a result Barca always had a dominant outlet and consistent build up play. Putting Park (probably ManUtd’s best player early) on Alvez limited the Alvez outlet, but meant that Giggs and Carrick were outnumbered and overwhelmed (and when Messi dropped deep they were either 4-2 or ManUtd were grossly out of position somewhere) – which more often than not resulted in a number of Barca’s midflield running at the ManUTd defense and/or in United’s wide players being drawn in, which limited their outlet once they won the ball.
First they switched Park and Rooney shortly before their goal which saw an improvement, but Rooney was very ill disciplined without the ball (see Ferguson animatedly giving him an earful midway through the first half).
They ended up rotating Rooney, Park and Giggs out wide but Giggs got torn apart by Alvez and Park soon tired and thus became much less influential without the ball.

This was the key to my mind – they could never stop both. Perhaps with two Parks on the field they could have stifled Barca more successfully. If they’d started Fletcher instead of Hernandez though, the line-up and formation would have been very similar to the one Madrid employed (and was ridiculed for) at home in their 1st leg.

It’s just an impossible system and collection of players to match up on. In the last two years I haven’t seen anyone come close. I guess Arsenal fans would say that they were a Bendtner shoe-lace from knocking them out in the quarters, which in retrospect was an vulnerable as Barca got all year.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 2:19 am

Barca struggle to impose their possession often in the first 5-10 minutes. You see this in La Liga games where they come out looking jittery and then settle down to the methodical passing game. Not sure if it’s because they need to warm up to the speed mentally or the opposition loses it’s stamina after 10 minutes of high pressing.

Poor Park, he was doing great, but after all his teammates got tired and quit pressing he was the only one running around like a chicken and pressing with one man is a waste. It’s clear that at least 2 destroyers are absolutely necessary to play against Barca.

david on May 29, 2011 at 4:00 am

I doubt Anderson would provide much in the midfield against teams like Barca. Again, Fletcher was sorely missed. If Hargreaves were in good shape, ManUtd would have been much better. With three energetic midfielders (Fletcher and Hargreaves as DMs and Park as drifting between central and wide areas), ManUtd might have prevailed.

IainNC on May 29, 2011 at 9:44 am

“Barca struggle to impose their possession often in the first 5-10 minutes. You see this in La Liga games where they come out looking jittery and then settle down to the methodical passing game. Not sure if it’s because they need to warm up to the speed mentally or the opposition loses it’s stamina after 10 minutes of high pressing.”

The latter, I think. One thing Barca are very good at (last night being a case in point) is starting the second half well: if the problem was settling down, you’d not expect them to impose themselves on the early part of the second half so strongly.

sic on May 29, 2011 at 2:15 pm

It’s not the jitters, it’s the other team running out of juice quickly. It’s hard to chase the ball about for 10-15 minutes. It’s also hard to dominate a match when the other team comes out playing with so much intensity from the get go. Few teams are able to maintain that intensity for long in the face of the calm passing though.

Full credit to Park for playing with a lot of heart, but rarely have I seen a player so thoroughly abused as he was by Messi (when Park switched with Giggs). It was awe inspiring because Park is probably one of the most tenacious defender in the world and Messi had him so dizzy that I thought his head was going to spin off of his body…!

Cathal on May 30, 2011 at 11:29 pm

I think the main reason Barca start slowly is because quite often the opposition start with a high-line congesting the space. This causes a few problems early on but then the likes of Messi, Villa, Pedro, Xavi, etc push the opposition back stretching out their lines.

It’s partly stamina but mainly psychological…

Ograsrot on May 29, 2011 at 8:31 am

In the first minutes Barca looked nervy – had ManU found a way to pressure up high and keep the pressure going?

I think what happened, which allowed Barca to gain control of the game, was that Xavi and Busquets started switching positions, allowing Xavi to conduct the passing from deep in own territory, getting the ball forward to Messi in a central midfield position. And it worked great. Then Xavi and Busquets would simply, and neatly, switch positions back. The first few minutes, the problem was for Barca to get the ball past ManU’s midfield. Once they done that it, it was pretty much in the bag.

Meanwhile it was smart that Hernandez man-marked Pique in Barca’s build up, forcing Macherano to spread the balls.

replayed on May 29, 2011 at 3:43 pm

Thank you, Ograsrot, for the insight about Xavi and Busquets switching position. It’s refreshing whenever someone here (ZM included) actually goes to the effort of trying to figure out how Barca deal with the opposition’s attempt to nullify their game.

Given Barca’s current domination of European football (and Spain’s domination of international football), it’s perfectly understandable that ZM and his followers are primarily excited by the search for the Holy Grail of an effective tactical solution to tiki-taka, with Mourinho as their last, best hope.

But shouldn’t they also get a little bit excited about tiki-taka’s adjustments to the threats against it, instead of going around on endless variations of talk about destroyers and midfielder counts?

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 11:39 am

Yeah, Pique was imperious at the back, except for two lanky moments early on he was very dominant. I thought, for all the unrealistic talk of Rooney picking up Busquets, Guardiola countered this perfectly by moving him up the pitch and having Xavi drop deeper (between the two CBs at several occasions).

But, Messi was the deserved man of the match for me, he was out of this world… His runs (with and without the ball) completely took any shape out of United’s defensive set-up, although his through balls weren’t of the usual calibre, the ability to get past his (zonal) markers and create space just tore them to shreds. His goal was a pearl, not unsaveable but I really wouldn’t hold VDS accountable, little jink to the left to take out Evra, fast-paced low-skidding shot curling to the outside that’s becoming his trade-mark (see last season v Stuttgart and Deportivo, identical goals). And for Villa’s goal, he basically did all the work to draw defenders onto him, leaving Villa in time and space.

Yeah, last year he fell in love with the top left corner but GK’s adjusted to it by cheating to that side (see arg vs nigeria). You can see VDS was doing the same on the play. He started using that low shot crossed to the other side to keep the GK honest.

Similar to the one against Brazil in the friendly also. That was one was placed better but didn’t have much power.

Barnesy10 on May 29, 2011 at 4:44 pm

Spot on.

RM#1 on May 29, 2011 at 10:03 pm

Are you kidding? That goal was a complete gift. Messi did nothing special at all and now we have to hear all they hype. The shot wasn’t even particularly powerful.

The guy is incredibly arrogant too. Did you see during the ceremony how all Barcelona’s players jogged to the center after introduction and Messi just walked like if he was the king of the world.

David on May 30, 2011 at 8:37 am

There is a string of words above, posted at 10:03 pm. They are ostensibly in English, but I don’t understand any of them; it’s as they were written in code. Strange…

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 1:42 am

Looks like Park was man-marking Messi for awhile.

suleiman on May 29, 2011 at 1:14 am

I was shocked when I realized that Rooney simply was watching Barca’s players passing among each other from a distance, like a spectator in front of a t.v. It was a definite mistake to start with Hernandez and maybe Ferguson should have listened to Wilshere & Fabregas, both of whom hadn’t put Hernandez into their starting eleven.

Jay on May 29, 2011 at 1:19 am

Seems like an end of an era for me. Giggs and Scholes surely cant play another year at this elite level, might be good enough to win the EPL but not the CL with Barca and Real back again next season.

Angarwaen on May 29, 2011 at 1:20 am

Great analysis. If you have them, could we see Busquets’ passing stats for this match (or if you know where one can find them when one does not have a Smartphone ) ? He was phenomenal, controling the midfield, giving the tempo. When he gets his act clean he is definitely the world’s best defensive midfielder.

And Pedro starting on the left and Villa on the right was kind of a novelty. It worked well, Pedro containing Fabio’s forward runs and Villa finding space with Evra’s haphazard positioning. Villa had one of his best games since January.

another stat on Goal, was that Busi and Iniesta passed the most between them (45 times) and Rio and Van Der sar the most for Man U (30 or so times). Very telling.

Patrick on May 29, 2011 at 1:23 am

Does ZM think Ferguson’s rant at Rooney was because he was slack when it came to picking up Busquets?

I was looking out for this ploy from Utd, and Rooney certainly appeared to be sticking to him, but as the first half went on Busquets found more and more room, could Rooney be accused of lacking concentration?

Also, I think we all knew before the game that Carrick and Giggs is simply not a good enough central midfield to cope with Barca. It seems strange that Ferguson didn’t go with 3 in the middle, Utd never had a change the way they set up.

legoman on May 29, 2011 at 6:38 am

If you notice, Xavi often switched with Busquets in their positions as the deepest midfielder.

This means that either Rooney goes back into an uncomfortable position and follows Busquets, he tries to mark Xavi whom he was possibly not told to or hadn’t studied, or he just tries to look for space when on the counter.

dSquib on May 29, 2011 at 1:23 am

Busquets was barely fazed by Rooney, always aware. He was immense in general.

Park was disappointing. Saw him take out Alves early on, then Messi, not sure if purely tactical but he seemed disappointing and sloppy after that. Was it overkill to have both him and Valencia come so deep and narrow? Understand Valencia doing so, Abidal not a huge threat wide, but Park trying to cut off Messi centrally a bunch of times gave Alves so much space.

I also thought Hernandez was a mistake sadly. Even Anderson in a middle three may have helped.

Kuxxa on May 29, 2011 at 1:25 am

Thing is if Rooney dropped too deeped, Hernandez would have been far too isolated. He’s not a lone striker type.

evilcherry on May 29, 2011 at 1:32 am

Then start without him. Not being Satirical, but even an unfit Fletcher could have exerted more influence.

evilcherry on May 29, 2011 at 1:28 am

Some points for Manchester United:

1. They simply did not press enough and man mark enough. If this was foreign to them, then it is their problem. The best way to play against Barca, as Wenger demonstrated, is to mimic their play, perhaps with a defensive intent.

2. I’d opt to have as many defensively minded players on the field as practically possible (or ones that can do a decent defensive job), and try to scrape into extra time before trying to attack. I’d even consider starting with no striker. Its Mourinho-ish, but it should work for long enough (or at least not to cause an embarrassment like today).

3. Starting Chicharito is suicidal if Rooney do not play like a midfielder. Busquets simply had too much time on the ball, and Giggs contributed little in defense.

4. Evra, like his usual self, is invisible. He did not mark his man well, nor keep his position well. He’s past his sell-by.

5. Park was… odd. He has this problem quite a number of times. He certainly should be his WC’02 self and press 100% of the time. Perhaps he think that was Carrick’s region, but that is telling him to take on 3 on his own. If his job was Messi, then he should keep himself to it. If his job is to help out the midfield, at least he should follow his men until he made a pass or a shoot.

6. They play too much football. They are not defending enough in the Italian sense, that is they play that as too much a gentlemen’s game. In other words, not fouling when it is beneficial.

7. As I said, I’d consider positive time-wasting as the primary game plan.

JediRage on May 29, 2011 at 7:37 am

I found it strange that when Fabio got injured, he didn’t just lie down on the field. He instead walked off the pitch to stand behind United’s goal!!

That is some inexperience right there!

sic on May 29, 2011 at 2:19 pm

Weren’t they losing at that point? Time wasting when you are down a goal would seem like a bad strategy.

JediRage on May 29, 2011 at 5:33 pm

Its not like United were going to do any better with 10 men on the field if they couldn’t with 11.

dSquib on May 29, 2011 at 1:28 am

Like Barca’s formation, looking like a 4-3-1-2, 4-1-2-1-2 as it should work, with the exact right players, but rarely does.

Xavi and Busquets were remarkable today. Their dual control of the match dictated the dynamics. Both were great.

It’s hard to understand how Busquets can’t be widely considered to be a brilliant footballer. He was such a stark difference between the two sides today. United did not have any player of Busquets caliber to play between the lines and that just hurt them over and over.

As well as Barca played – it was surprising to seem them not shunt the attack more through Dani Alves in the first half. They didn’t maximize the tactical advantages they had on that flank.

Park did not play in the traditional defensive wing position he often assumes, a role that seemed natural for this game against Alves. Instead he was repeatedly pinching inwards to try to make up for the numerical disadvantage United were at in midfield. Valencia was doing the same on the other side, but it was Park who was almost trying to play in two different zones at the same time.

Park moving between the flank and center left significant space along the right flank for Alves to run into. I don’t know when the last time was when he had that kind of space in front of him. From this perspective I could see why Ferguson finally just moved Park to the center later on. The problem was leaving Giggs on in the flank.

Ferguson’s approach was almost like trying to see how fast they could juggle. Rooney, Park and Valencia were almost asked to play two different positions at once defensively. When United tired a bit in the second and Barca pushed the action, that juggling came to a crashing halt.

But United’s vulnerabilities between the lines almost seemed too tempting for Barca’s attack to resist and they didn’t really probe that space along the right flank as much as they could have. There was just so much space between those lines to utilize. All three goals were generated through movements in that region. And this was even with Ferdinand and Vidic doing a well in how they stepped up. Few killer diagonals were played by them when they moved forward.

Winning La Liga early was critical for Barca. They looked exhausted at points given their small squad. Villa was the player who was suffering the most. With two weeks off he played his best game in months. In addition to the goal, his passing and link up play were excellent. And his work rate in defense was outstanding.

And this team can get better next season just by adding more depth – which was their perhaps their greatest weakness.

I think that the key factor (correct me if you don’t agree) was the inefficiency of Ryan Giggs in the middle. I mean, he is a great player, excellent ability and he’s very intelligent… the point is that in a 1-4-4-2 formation against Barcelona, you know that your central midfielders will struggle to contain the Barça’s ball circulation and Giggs don’t have the stamina (or mentality) to run back and forth pressing the ball. Carrick was alone doing that role, having eventually the support of Park or Rooney.

Fletcher would be a good option. Such as Anderson. Do you think that Sir Alex Fergunson decision to maintain Giggs on the field was a sympathetic decision towards everything he (Giggs) made for the club? At 20′ from the 1st half I was already questioning when would Giggs be replaced…

Dan on May 29, 2011 at 1:40 am

Spot on with United surrendering the midfield. I don’t understand why as it was the most obvious tactic. United are an excellent team but they allowed Barca to do what they do best. Their wingers were poor and so were their fullbacks. Van der Sar played an excellent game and it was sad to see him go out like this but I don’t think he could have done too much on the 3 goals. I was very surprised that they didn’t put up more of a fight in midfield. It really exaggerated the gulf between the sides.

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 8:44 am

United didn’t exactly surrender the midfield. I believe Sir Alex Ferguson knew that Giggs and Carrick are not as skillful as Xavi or Iniesta leaving space for them to exploit.Instead he opted to let them have the ball and use Giggs’s and Carrick’s positional awareness to intercept passes and deny space which I felt they did a decent job in doing so.

CJ on May 29, 2011 at 9:51 am

VDS an excellent game? Are you serious? He was awful! At fault for the first goal – beaten near post (again!) and caught out of position and completely flat footed for the second. After that he made some good saves and he could do nothing about Villa’s goal but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he should have done better with the first two goals.

Also VDS kicking was wild and erratic, first half all of his kicks went straight out of play. I keep hearing the Sky presenters saying how he is like an extra passer on the field, well he was woeful last night. I think he suffers from nerves in big games, 2009, 2008 (vs Barca over two legs) and various other cup games he has made mistakes and his kicking just completely fails.

Footballfan on May 29, 2011 at 1:57 pm

CJ, to be fair to VDS he had a good game. He made a lot of crucial saves. Pedro’s goal couldn’t be stopped. His movement was very fast – even Manuel Neuer or Iker Casillas wouldn’t be able to stop that goal

LaneCruiser on May 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm

I do not agree. VdS was good last night. Like you pointed out yourself, he did make good saves. I’ll go ahead and say that the decisive factor in all the goals are the strikers’ decision to put an unexpected angle to their shots, and that the defenders could have done much better. The score could have easily been 4-1 or 5-1 if VDS was as awful as the way you put it.

Dan on May 29, 2011 at 5:08 pm

If VDS game was poor the score would have been closer to 6-1. Sure he was beaten near post but that was a case of “pick your poison”. I think he was blinded by his defender for Messi’s goal as well so I think it’s somewhat unfair to call him flat footed on that one. He kept the score to a point that flattered Man U in a very one sided game.

By the way I have never thought much of Rooney. I won’t make that mistake again.

RM#1 on May 29, 2011 at 10:04 pm

I swear Barca are the luckiest team. VDS gifted Messi a goal. It’s no wonder so many players fap on Messi and law off of defensive duties cause he such a “nice” gay. His persona is totally fake and it makes me sick.

Tippão on May 30, 2011 at 1:44 am

Only one of the teams were lucky and it was Manchester United – lucky that Barça didn’t get a bucketload of goals… yes Messi was gifted his goal, but Vidic was the culprit not Van der Saar! The ball passed JUST by his right leg but both his feet were planted on the ground – a terrible position for trying to get in a block. You can’t blame Van der Saar for thinking that Vidic might provide some sort of protection for that side of his goal given his standing position when Messi addressed the ball…

ooga aga on May 30, 2011 at 5:57 am

two words for RM#1: sour grapes
by the way have you ever played keeper? VDS gifted nothing.

PundaMavne on May 30, 2011 at 6:12 am

Since when did Jose Mourinho start posting on this board

LaMaquina on May 29, 2011 at 1:44 am

At the end of the day, you just can’t play this Barcelona side without at least one hard working ball winner in central midfield. Rooney was overeager to attack and didn’t have the drive to also defend. Chicharito had almost no service. A side will not compete against Barcelona with only two CMs.

Wenger had the side best constructed to play Barcelona straight up with the Song-Wilshere tandem and quick, willing defenders on the flanks (Nasri).

David Villa, in contrast, absolutely worked his socks off without the ball as did Pedro. This was the best match I’d seen from Villa since last year, maybe even all the way back to South Africa.

I thought Abidal did a great job of confronting Valencia every time he received a pass, denying him any space to turn and run. This was the reason I expected Guardiola to start Abidal if he was anywhere near fit.

In my opinion, United need some big investment in the middle of the pitch. They need at least one ball quality ball winning midfielder. There are several promising young players, particularly in France, who I’m sure Ferguson will be looking at in detail this summer.

WafflingWenger on May 29, 2011 at 2:17 am

“In my opinion, United need some big investment in the middle of the pitch. They need at least one ball quality ball winning midfielder. There are several promising young players, particularly in France, who I’m sure Ferguson will be looking at in detail this summer.”

It’s funny, the commonly held consensus semmes to be that ManUtd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham all supposedly need one of these players.

I’m not sure they exist anymore.

Big Baller on May 29, 2011 at 2:56 am

Mascherano is still young enough. It’s kind of weird to see him play center back. He did well enough there I suppose.

The entire game I was thinking MUTD was in need of a player like Mascherano. At his best, he would be a formidable defensive nuisance for Barca’s middle.

They exist.

Loco Wu on May 29, 2011 at 5:26 am

Barca has always been lucky with players of Mascherano’s style. The benefits to the team were much alike when Edgar Davids arrived during the Rijkaard years.

Brad on May 29, 2011 at 6:05 am

We mustn’t forget one of the best defensive mids, and offensive for that matter is former Barca player and Man City stalwart – Yaya Toure. He’d be marvelous on any team – he was supreme at Barca. I wonder if he prefers the cash and FA cup? Busi made him expendable.

David on May 29, 2011 at 11:32 am

Yes the answer is Yaya Toure.

SAF has long wanted to buy a destroyer or a ball winning midfielder. His first purchase – hargreaves – was a huge failure.

SAF then DID try to buy him when he left Barca.

But he chose city to play with his brother, unfortunately for United.

WafflingWenger on May 29, 2011 at 12:53 pm

hmmm… and yet Man City often play him as an attacking midfielder. So clearly the fact that he can track and tackle is less important to their game plan than ’something else’.

A on May 29, 2011 at 4:10 am

Argentina, Brazil, Italy (Serie A is loaded with these players), France, almost any African country, all produce quality ball winning midfielders.

WafflingWenger on May 29, 2011 at 5:15 am

Every time I’ve since Masch play at barca he’s looked out of his depth – just my opinion. Maybe it’s a settling in period or whatever, but he’s usually the most technically limited player in their lineup. I often cringe when he’s under pressure with the ball at feet.

If these players are in such high demand, why do all of the richest clubs in the richest league in the world still supposedly need (at least) one? La Liga and EPL have been the most successful clubs in Europe and I just don’t seem too many in their leagues any more…certainly no young ones.

To be fair, I’ve found ZM’s past comments on the ‘double-pivots’ in contemporary football interesting… Perhaps the nature of the double-pivot means that they can share the defensive duties of the single defensive midfield destroyer of yesteryear and in doing so, can afford to be more technical gifted and less of a purely physical defensive brute ala Keano. I don’t dispute high quality ball-winning midfielders exist, I just dispute whether that the ability to win the ball is their distinguishing characteristic feature anymore. There weren’t all that many tackles flying in last night…

gianni on May 29, 2011 at 12:20 pm

my personal opinion about mascherano (when I read that some columnist billed him as one of the world’s best deep-playing midfielders) was exactly the same as the one I have about busquets now: they’re hugely overrated.

mascherano has never had huge technical skills on the ball (great drive and determination + endless runs, no doubt about it, but that’s it; and not great positioning either).

busquets is more technically gifted and tactically disciplined than mascherano but still, he’s been graced by being the teammate of the best midfielders of this generation (xavi and iniesta). I doubt he would be in the starting XI of any other top team.
in my personal opinion gago (backbencher at real) is much more talented than busquets is.

guil9 on May 29, 2011 at 12:31 pm

Gago better than Busquets? Really? Are you a Madrid fan? If not, look the article about Busquets in WC Final here in ZM.

sic on May 29, 2011 at 2:28 pm

Gago over Busquets!? Remind me not to hire you as my sporting director.

Busquets is such an understated player I can understand how many people miss his brilliance. For somebody so young he reads the game as well as anybody in football. His positioning sense is what makes him so valuable. His passing/pressing/intercepting is also among the best in the world at that position. The only area in which he is subpar is tackling and I would argue that tackling is not something Barcelona needs out of a DM. He would make the starting XI in pretty much any top team in the world. In fact a player like Busquets is exactly what Manchester United need in their midfield.

Mascherano also has an incredible positional sense, reads the game very well, and obviously his tackling is among the best in the world. His passing is suspect, compared to the rest of the players on the squad, but he has improved a great deal from the beginning of the season which indicates to me that he has been working hard to adapt to the Barça style. Both players are humble and hard working, Guardiola couldn’t be happier with his DMs.

gianni on May 29, 2011 at 3:36 pm

well, I’m not a madridista, but I suspect that you both are barca supporters !

leaving jokes aside, I said that gago is more talented than busquets (not better: the quality of a player is always functional to his team, so that a good player may not play well in a bad team, and a bad player may offer more than his real value while playing in a great team), and the fact that busquets has not been offered caps for his national selection before he made it with the under-21 team (unlike gago, who had played from the under-17 selection onwards) may clarify my statement.

I agree when talking about Busquets’ positional ability, which is indeed his most notable skill as I mentioned before, and he’s good in keeping the ball, but when talking about real footballing talent -pls, compare him to xavi and iniesta to that extent, or to ozil or cronaldo, just to remain in spain- well, I can’t help noticing the difference.

he’s a hard working bloke, no doubt about it, and he’s young enough to keep improving, but again I’m talking about real, shining talent. as soon as xavi and iniesta will have past their peak his limits will be more evident.

ManU already has a player like this (albeit older) but owen hargreaves like gago has been injured for so long until recently.

about mascherano: his appalling disciplinary record while playing at anfield road was largely due to his fierce tackling ability (which was not entirely under his control, in my opinion) but it also had to do with the fact that he was often caught out of position during counterattacks and had to stop opponents with bad tackles.

I suppose that the passing game practised by barca (other than the mere fact that playing for barca in liga offers more ‘protection’ from referees than playing for liverpool in premiership) can explain his improvement in downsizing the number of yellow cards he’s been shown this year.

Look at this, I don’t see Gago doing this never. Busquets is more technically gifted than 80% (minimum) of creative midfielders of La Liga (and Premiership).

JH on May 29, 2011 at 1:45 am

Agree with this. I thought that, as you had suggested in the preview, too much space between the lines might cost Man Utd. The lack of bodies in midfield – a huge problem when up against two creative midfielders and Messi playing as a false nine – was what cost them the game and it’s clear that Ferguson learned nothing from the 2009 final. Fletcher, if even remotely fit, had to start – to press Barcelona and to provide energy and bite in midfield (qualities which were sorely lacking here.)

On another note, some of the “punditry” on Sky was atrocious. I can’t remember who said it (either Jamie Redknapp or Gary Neville) but one of their pundits commented before the game that “Pique is an very good footballer but he’s not a natural defender.” WTF.

kyl on May 29, 2011 at 3:44 am

“On another note, some of the “punditry” on Sky was atrocious. I can’t remember who said it (either Jamie Redknapp or Gary Neville) but one of their pundits commented before the game that ‘Pique is an very good footballer but he’s not a natural defender.’ WTF.”

I think the comment should be, “Pique is a very good footballer, but he could never play for England.” -cough-

David on May 29, 2011 at 4:23 am

If you see Pique play, you see how clever he is in reading the game and also leading the attack by often adding an extra man in the midfield area. He may not be as good as Ferdinand or Vidic in pure jobs as centreback but he has all these extra abilities over the ManUtd centrebacks. He was not simply a natural centreback in EPL. ManUtd needed a centreback like Pique yesterday.

WafflingWenger on May 30, 2011 at 1:09 am

“Pique is an very good footballer but he’s not a natural defender.”

It’s because he doesn’t fit the English stereotype. Arsenal have this problem all the time.

i.e. he’s not ugly enough, not angry enough, doesn’t break enough legs, has too much technical ability, is too good at reading the game, is too good at passing, keeps the ball too well, plays too intelligently etc.

If he grew up in England, they’d probably think he was a striker!

DOF on May 31, 2011 at 2:49 pm

To be fair Piquet does have his bad moments (World Cup, friendly against Portugal and so on).
But he is quite good at pushing into the midfieled and starting the play from the back. He’s like the old dutch total football CBs or like Beckenbauer.

Arsenal do not have a good keeper and CB pair and the wide-players don’t always track/ man-mark the opposition fullbacks (Ashely Cole – Drogba pair costed them a lot of pain).

XavinIesta on June 1, 2011 at 9:05 am

Touché ! Couldn’t have said it better..

Alf on May 31, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Interestingly, Pique won the ball back for Barcelona more than any other player. Other than the scary pass back to Valdez, he played superb with minimal mistakes.

dearieme on May 29, 2011 at 1:47 am

Fine summary, ZM, but one question. I can see that other sides find it impossible to match Barca’s two main attacking methods – the pitter-patter passing, and the Messi dribbling. But a large part of their game is the pressing high upfield that flusters the opposition into giving the ball away – surely even less skilful sides could practise that art until they are good at it?

dSquib on May 29, 2011 at 1:51 am

they could try, but Barcelona find it so easy to do so, in part, because when they have the ball 70%+ they are not using too much energy.

evilcherry on May 29, 2011 at 2:01 am

But that’s how the Mourinho plan, and it did work save unfortunate sent-offs.

It even worked better at Inter since there are less passengers (specifically, Oezil and sometimes Ronaldo).

That’s one thing for certain: you must press for 200% the effort, and try to run close to the line the referee draws.

sic on May 29, 2011 at 2:35 pm

Mourinho’s plan is to play violently, which always carries a risk of red cards. He got away with it the Copa del Rey, where the Spanish referee was intimidated by the impressive media pressure of the Madrid press (which was in overdrive during the endless clásicos), but it was never a good bet that it would work in the CL.

There’s no need for violence, teams like Rubin Kazaan have beaten Barcelona (twice) by playing extremely disciplined defense and hitting out on counters, and other teams like Villareal and Valencia have played them straight up at their game, challenging Barça in the midfield with their own skilled players and come very close to winning.

Qwe on May 30, 2011 at 1:02 am

Don’t forget to mention Sevilla…

phil on May 29, 2011 at 2:04 am

I agree with that, and I really wonder how that can be beaten. Barca rarely have to press hard late in games because they’re in control by then. If you manage to make them work late in a game, could they press effectively? Maybe not, as Barca gets tired too.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 2:22 am

I liked how Argentina played against Spain in that friendly. 3 quality DM’s (masch, cambiasso, banega) who could also maintain possession with short passes. Yeah, it was just a friendly and no Messi for Barca but still it was interesting.

WafflingWenger on May 31, 2011 at 4:07 am

This is a misunderstanding.

At least physically, Barcelona are using more energy. Against ManUtd they ran over 4km more (combined), because they all work so hard off the ball when in possession. Of course there is a psychological difference between having the ball and chasing shadows…

Big Baller on May 29, 2011 at 3:02 am

The problem with lesser skilled sides pressing is your left exposed in a wide open game.

Most managers are uncomfortable with this. If your giving up 3, 4 or 5 goals a game it usually means your unemployed soon. You need to skill to fall back on.

kyl on May 29, 2011 at 4:00 am

When you press, you need a holding player/sweeper, whatever you want to call it. Vidic managed to put himself in the hole occasionally when United pressed, but that is asking him to play two roles.

Barca manage to press effectively for three reasons. Their high defensive line, then Busquets and Valdez. Busquets task is to isolate one of the forwards, Valdez takes care of balls played through the backline. Together these two tasks allowed Pique and Mascherano to press up the pitch. This is for me the brilliance of Guardiola’s side, when compared to Barcelona 2006.

I thought Valdez showed how he really is the right GK for Pep’s side today, making quite a few crucial interceptions.

ZM says this regarding the second Barcelona goal (i.e. Messi’s): “That said, as mentioned earlier, it was the centre-backs’ job to come up towards Messi, and they were slow to do so.”

I think it was Evra’s job to step up on Messi instead of one of the centerbacks doing so. On both of Barca’s first two goals, Evra steps up to Messi. On the first goal, this leaves Pedro open on Barca’s right. On the second goal, Evra is just too late to stop Messi shooting. But I think the tactical solution to Messi’s dropping back that Ferguson decided on was to have Evra step up out of defense rather than one of the centerbacks.

Ho on May 29, 2011 at 2:37 am

I think ZM meant to say that either Rio or Vidic should rush to close down on Messi when he got the ball.

If Evra left his position Villa would be unmarked.

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 2:28 am

Rooney’s lack of defending/ marking S. Busquets and the gap between lines were crucial in the embarrassment of ManU.

avnakhadira on May 29, 2011 at 2:38 am

arsenal would fit just nice in Laliga.
manutd would be king in serie A.
liverpool can owned the Ligasagres/bundesliga.
and…chelsea,mancity,spurs -”busine$$$$”

Big Baller on May 29, 2011 at 3:11 am

Reading most of the comments leads me to this conclusion. You can’t play against Barca and expect to win if you play “in-between”, or play to “your own comfort level.”

In other words:
1. you either have to attack all-out with an aggressive offensive lineup. 4-2-4 or 3-4-3 or 4-3-3, mimicking their style but overwhelming their back line in numbers.

2. the other option is to play ultra defensive Mourinho plan or Catenaccio, anti-football, clutching, grabbing, overly physical and wait for the opportunity for your lone goal.

Otherwise it’s business as usual for them, they finish the game without breaking a sweat and their uniforms clean.

SAF’s biggest mistake was announcing to the world that 4-4-1-1 with Rooney and Hernandez up top and Giggs, and Carrick was his #1 option.

Of course a Champions League Final is not the time to go completely out of character but now looking back at the 3-1 result, they leave you little choice.

But what manager has the courage to see his side lose 5-3 in a wide open match. Most would prefer Catenaccio and keeping it 0-0.

evilcherry on May 29, 2011 at 3:38 am

The 433 of Barca is not even Aggressive in attack. Their attack is based on patience and moments of brilliance.
It is, on the other hand, very aggressive in defense, as all 11 players contribute in the pressing full time.

Going Gung-ho is definitely not an option, if that means not pressing. And even the plan for Mourinho – depending on which game you see – is pressing heavy. Unfortunately a few players contributed nothing to defense – and thus nothing to the game – and I don’t know how can they justify their payroll.

That said, either RM or United players have their own egos to slack off. They should at least Play. Like. Stoke.

Nick on May 29, 2011 at 3:44 am

I really think a 3-4-3 with a diamond in the middle would be the one formation that would cause Barca problems. It still leaves you with an extra man at the back since messi drops deep and the man at the base of the diamond could pick him up and you wouldn’t be out numbered in midfield. You would also be able to pick up the fullbacks.

No one plays 3 in the back nowadays and everyone seems scared to try it. I’m not a big fan either, but think it could work here. Liverpool tried it against Chelsea with some success and would love to see them play Barca to see if it actually would work

JediRage on May 29, 2011 at 7:45 am

This is true. Many times, I’d see a bank of United’s four at the back with no Barcelona player around them. Which was a waste of bodies that could have been useful. Rio usually does well when he comes out of defence with the ball but at his age I’m not sure he could have come into midfield to help out.

If United had some like DeMichelis to help dominate the midfield (like Bayern did against United in 2010) maybe it would have helped.

mikex on May 29, 2011 at 4:13 am

words of wisdom

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 11:54 am

Catenaccio hasn’t been played for close to 40 years.

Do you even know what Catenaccio means ?!

It means complete man marking thru out the field with a libero at the back to do a double up (like 1-3-3-3, 1-4-3-2, 1-4-2-3 and so forth).
Mourinho used mixed marking more akin to zona mista.

gianni on May 29, 2011 at 12:37 pm

…plus “wait for the opportunity for your lone goal” brought 3 goals to mourinho’s cause, 1 year ago. not bad to be anti-football !

at the end of the day so many of you commented that man united didn’t put up the fight in midfield.

they were poor against sides that press them.

but more importantly:

1) fergie showed this season he couldn’t change well against a tactically sound opp when needed (vs man city, arsenal and liverpool for example)
2) he trives on having enough tools to work with. unfortunately his midfield is extremely short. the wingers do switch around alot but he does not have last season’s fletcher.

question is would a M’vila, Lass Diarra or an excellant box to box midfielder like yaya toure matter more to this?

i always believe that if the coach is astute enough and this players are above average they can make a game for it. mourinho did that for his inter team. look at how the current inter coaches used them.

Darren on May 29, 2011 at 3:39 am

..speaking of coaches, i wonder what future Mike Phelan has now? I dont think he is cut out as a number two at this level of the game, he doesnt seem to know how or what to suggest to SAF when things arent going according to plan. At the highest level your number two should be presenting alternate suggestions to his manager and actively questioning and working through the mangers planning during the game so as to be a sounding board and if necessary contradict the manager on subs, tactics etc. You cannot afford to simply be a “ves” man or be too afraid of the man in charge to even suggest something different…

I think as loyal a servant as he has been surely a new number two is required if Utd are to lift SAF’s third European cup for him..??

to be fair with him they did went very far in FA cup, league cup, The league and champions league.

but people will be surprise with a steve clarke at man utd. now watch liverpool closely

Qwe on May 30, 2011 at 1:25 am

Are you privy to conversations going on between SAF and Phelan, or are you just looking to point the finger at someone? Man Utd were simply not good enough to compete with Barca. They’ve depended on 2 midfielders in their mid/late 30’s to bring success. By the end of the season, they’re naturally exhausted. People have been saying it all season: the midfield is Man Utd’s weakest link. Guess what was the weakest link last night?

Yang on May 29, 2011 at 3:32 am

Barca played very well. Best team ever? may be so.

No need to analysis too much. Ferguson, even if he adapt somewhat for CL, is ultimate attacking minded manager.

I cannot see how to beat this Barca team without heavy defensive setup, Mr Mou can match with defensive setup but still not very convincing yet. Better ready for 1-2 more Barca world domination.

Darren on May 29, 2011 at 3:34 am

can someone explain why Anderson and Fletcher did not even come off the bench..?? extraordinary that they didnt if they were even half fit. Why bother having them take two spots on the bench when you dont even allow one of them game time?? I will have to accept then that barring som wonderful tactical reason neither player was deemed fit enough to start AND not fit enough to come off the bench. I just cannot fathom why either player did not contribute in this game considering some of the skills they both bring to the game were precisely what Utd were crying out for…?

Another point; the closest we have had to SAF revealing his transfer plans is the admission that De Gea is a player who the manager thinks can replace VDS and fair enough, the club do need to replace him for next season. However apart from that obvious replacement no other names have crept up from the club regarding replacements for other areas of the team. I wonder if the result from this game will decide who and where the manager invests his transfer funds?

Clearly you would have to assume that the centre of midfield must require some attention. I suppose at least one new player in there is required, but more importantly where does this leave Fletcher and Andersons future with the club? Just going by this game; if neither were deemed good enough to grace the playing field tonight then what are their long term futures..??

David on May 29, 2011 at 4:36 am

My answer to your question is that Fletcher was still not match fit (at least that’s what SAF thought) and Anderson is still relatively immature against opposition of this calibre. He played in 99 final and he was hopeless.

Hopeless in 2009 or not… it would have been fair to see Anderson in 2011 given that he was considered good enough to be on the bench and Man Utd practically needed a player of his attributes.

I think Fergie got it wrong again (as in 2009). His starting team selection and formation as well as his substitutions. I remember ZM’s preview having an alternative formation/selection which didn’t have Hernandez and included Anderson/Fletcher. I felt that was the way to go and actually commented that Anderson should start.

Anyone who watched Hernandez (and I appreciate the boy’s got talent) against Arsenal at the emirates would have realised he was set to go through a Barca game like a passenger. Fergie didn’t realise that. He was carried away by the whole idea of pace, pace, pace, like most fans. His pace without anyone winning and passing the ball is nil.

It is that belief in pace that led Sir Alex to commit another mistake: completely leaving out Berbatov. No matter how slow some Utd fans believe he is – he remains the best natural technician in the team. One who can hold the ball and not fear any pressure; dribble and get a team to re-organise for attack. He could have come off the bench at some point and given something different to Man Utd. He may not score but he enables others to – and that is as important.

Watched the UEFA champions league final and we lost tonight anyways well done Barcelona the 2011 champions league winners

J. on May 29, 2011 at 3:53 am

Did anyone else notice that two from Barça’s three goals, were from outside the box?
I wonder if they trained for such a thing. They dont score a lot with long shots, they usually walk into the net.

This was a problem too for Manu defense. I saw them in a couple of occasions remaining freezed, not knowing what to do. Should they go for the player, near him, with the risk of being dribbled or, should they stand deep in order to prevent the “walking” into the net.

kyl on May 29, 2011 at 4:09 am

I figure they don’t score these goals for the reason that most coaches would like to have a player their closing them down. The way teams play against Barca or even Arsenal usually prevents the sort of space Messi and Villa were allowed. On any day, leaving two of the best strikers in the world open would be a shocking oversight, but it just happened in the CL final!

Two reasons for this:
1)Most teams facing Barcelona commit more bodies in midfield that ManU did last night which results in less space in front of the box,hence less opportunities for a free shot from that area.Messi,Villa,Pedro,Xavi,Iniesta are good shooters from that distance and got the chance last night to attempt a few shots
2)Vidic and Ferdinand are top top CBs.Even on a night where the midfield is struggling it is very hard to thread through passes past them or low parallel crosses from wide to inside the box.This also results into more shots from outside the box whenever you get the chance

james on May 29, 2011 at 10:45 am

I noticed this too. Normally, when English sides are playing Arsenal, they allow the gunners the space just outside the box. However most of the shots taken by the gunners outside the box are usually very poor. What was shoking was how accurate Barca’s shots from outside the box were

Ho on May 29, 2011 at 4:10 am

Indeed and agree on every point you made. Barca’s willingness to shoot is incredibly high tonight (especially Xavi and Iniesta).

money on May 29, 2011 at 4:56 am

They’ve started to shoot more from outside the box, praise be to Allah

Would this have worked against Barca? Carrick to follow Messi around the park, Ferdinand and Vidic staying back to check the runs of Villa and Pedro. Both centrebacks only get close to Villa and Pedro when they get near the box. Evra and Valencia provide cover on the wings and play direct balls to Berbatov to hold or Hernandez to run into. Rooney keeping tabs on Busquets, but really looking to break into the box to support Berbatov and Hernandez. Giggs and Anderson staying close to Xavi/ Inista, but Giggs holding more and Anderson taking on players with the ball. Not saying Man Utd would have won, but I think the performance would have been much better.

David on May 29, 2011 at 4:40 am

No, I guess this lineup you hypothesized would produce a score line of 5-1, even more humiliation.

Tom on May 29, 2011 at 5:15 am

Agreed, leaving Carrick 1 on 1 with Messi? Suicidal.

A on May 29, 2011 at 5:14 am

It’s fine when Barcelona narrow, but if their forwards spread out, that would cause trouble on the wings.

stowe on May 29, 2011 at 5:15 am

that’s there basic formation except you switch a defensive winger (Park) for a slow 9(Berbatov). The only real difference I see is that Anderson is in. Maybe it would have changed things. but this formation is much more attack minded and leaves Valencia and Evra trying to mark wingers and fullbacks

watcher on May 29, 2011 at 6:13 am

That plan seems to require too much initiative in defence in order to accomodate three strikers. Hindsight is 20/20, but the only way to put the screws is to press back even harder and I question Berbatov, Evra, Giggs and Valencia’s commitment to do so over any significant periods. Also trying to man-mark Messi seems an exercise in futility since he took on the false number nine role. Better players (with better defending) than Carrick have tried and failed. Far easier to mark his passing outlets out of the game and hope he has an off day. Also, it seems geared to accomodate Hernandez, since for all his pace he seems to be more of a last yard poacher that only works when Man Utd have significant boxplay than a greyhound forward chasing the over the top ball. I think really given Rooney’s temperament the only way out is really to play him as a lone striker. Sure, he might still get frustrated and go looking for the ball back in MF, but it’s still better than asking him to mark Busquets out of the game.

Arul on May 29, 2011 at 6:53 pm

I think what i am trying to say is Barca’s defence can be attacked if done properly, and indirectly will force iniesta and xavi to push lower to support, leaving the 3 strikers a little isolated. By playing direct balls to Berbatov, with Rooney and Anderson providing support and Hernandez waiting to pounce on loose balls might cause problems. Sure Barca will still dominate possesion and probably win the game, but i just feel that too many teams come with a plan to stop barca, but never a plan to beat barca. Just wished SAF would have been bolder. I also don’t agree the score would have been 5-1, i feel that if Barca were put under that kind of pressure at the back, they won’t push up as much. they will play more patiently and try to keep the ball more than break into space.

Sparkz on May 29, 2011 at 4:51 am

I think Utd’s plan of pressing for the first 10 minutes or so, and then sitting back was deliberate. You can’t press a team like Barca, on this tough Wembley pitch, for 90 minutes. They were probably looking to start exactly like they did, and then sit back until the 70 minute mark where Barca could tire….and then go for them again.

Unfortunately, they were 3-1 down by that point, so it wasn’t gonna work. Arsenal were extremely lucky at the Emirates, in that Barca wasted some glorious opportunities (plus Messi had a goal wrongly disallowed)- so they were able to go for them in the last 20. On another day, Utd would’ve rode their luck like Arsenal and it would’ve only been 1-1, or maybe just a 1 goal deficit going into the final period. A couple of the Barca goals tonight were slightly self inflicted errors too (only slightly, let’s not take anything away from the finishes!)

I do think Sir Alex made an error by starting Hernandez. I would’ve gone with Rooney up top on his own(maybe dropping back & getting on Busquet’s toes when Barca had the ball- this’d keep him closer to his midfield and we’d be more compact). Then 3 in midfield- 2 guys to go man to man vs Xavi & Iniesta, plus Carrick to sit deep and get Messi when he dropped into the “hole”. One of the CB’s could even have stepped out to help him in that area and get a 2 vs 1.

That way, you’ve matched them up, and with the right amount of energy, committment and luck, you could have a chance on the break, especially late on. Scholes on for Carrick baffled me as well, Carrick was by a million miles the only member of our midfield 4 who did any justice to himself. Felt sorry for him coz he had the Messi-Xavi-Iniesta triangle around him at times, and Giggsy was nigh on useless, but he did as well as he could’ve and started a lot of our moves

In saying all of that…when this Barca side play like this, it’s very difficult to stop them, and I don’t Utd should feel at all ashamed by their season.

dearieme on May 29, 2011 at 11:43 am

I agree that Giggs was invisible – except for use of his bum in an offside position.
Metaphors, metaphors, allegedly.

A on May 29, 2011 at 4:52 am

Being a lover of good defensive play, I think a 4-3-1-2 is the best way to stop Barca, much like Mourinho did this season. You have a standard back 4 doing their thing, and can afford attacking full-backs (once you get past their initial press). The 3 midfielders sit very deep and close together and form a ‘wall’ to stop them playing through the middle. At least one of them can hit a good long ball.
The 1 plays the same role as Messi, false 9/trequartista. His defensive role is a lot like what Sneijder played in the 1-0 against Barcelona last season http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/04/28/barcelona-inter-mourinho-tactics/
Basically, he’s a midfielder when Busquets is a midfielder, then he drifts to the wing when Busquets drops deep.
The 2 play wide, tracking Barca’s full-backs when defending, but also able to attack when it’s their turn.

The strategy is simple, and it’s worked against them enough times. Soak up their pressure, win the ball, launch long balls into the space their fullbacks leave behind. After a few chances being made this way, their fullbacks will be wary of leaving space behind, which means the front 2 will play closer and closer to goal. Once they get to this point, they begin to play like Villa and Pedro do at Barca, occupying a full-back and centre-back each.
It’s not the only way to deal with them, but it does seem like the easiest way.

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 12:11 pm

No it’s not, it’s 4-3-2-1/4-3-3/4-5-1 and last year it was 4-2-3-1 that became 4-3-3/4-5-1 with Sneijder tracking Xavi and Milito – Busquets.
A diamond midfield without wide players marking the fullbacks is suicide.

A on May 29, 2011 at 4:48 pm

There are wide players marking the fullbacks, like I said the front 2 play wide.
Last year it was a 4-2-3-1 because Barcelona only played 3 midfielders. This season, Messi becomes a 4th, so countering them properly requires an extra midfielder.

agreed. nowadays barcelona’s formation is resembling a 4-1-2-1-2 more so than it is a 4-3-3 but the forwards stay wide to occupy fullbacks while messi plays a free roll where he is both playmaker and center forward. the only way to counter this is to match it with a similar shape as barcelona have width and 4 central midfielders.

the only player in this with a low work rate is nani and he would be on barcelona’s least dangerous player. meanwhile, carrick would pick up messi deep knowing that if beaten he has two centerbacks behind him so messi can’t push forward to occupy a stand striker position. fletcher and anderson have the running ability to handle xavi and iniesta best and distribute to Rooney. Valencia may seem out of position but he offers height at right back and it isn’t completely foreign to him (he did play there for a short time in the game and earlier in the season)

DOF on May 30, 2011 at 10:35 pm

I agree but:
Do Nani and Park have what it takes to man mark the fullbacks properly ?
And is the Carrick, Fletcher, Anderson, Rooney diamond a match for the Barca diamond ?

Rooney couldn’t both mark SB and find space once in possession. As SAF said ManU isn’t used to man marking.

A on May 31, 2011 at 6:01 am

DOF, does Park have what it takes to mark a fullback? That’s what he’s famous for.
Then as Mezzala said, Nani would be marking the least dangerous player.

As for Rooney, he would struggle to mark Busquests all game. However, like I said in my original post, he wouldn’t need to mark him all game.
When Barcelona are in full on attack mode, Busquets drops back to make a back 3 so the full-backs can push up. If Rooney stays in the hole, that’d free him up. Then he can attack the space left by Alves, which (as the Classicos demonstrated) would scare Guardiola from giving his full-backs so much attacking freedom. He’d instruct them to stay back, meaning their markers would be closer to goal. Rooney and Park can switch at this time to get Roo+Nani working near Barca’s area.

wasnt giggs offside for man u’s first goal? his legs and head were ahead when the pass was made ,wasnt it?

blaze on May 29, 2011 at 6:10 am

advantage should go to the attacker, so i say no

Zadig on May 29, 2011 at 7:30 am

Clearly offside and Abidal immediately signaled to the linesman. The referees were too afraid of being ‘favorable to Barca’. That is why Valencia was allowed to foul Messi 3 times before finally being carded.

Yes, offside by inches. In fact the disallowed goal by Pedro in copa del ray was offside by only cm’s. But here the ref didnt see it. Anyways, lucky that it was MU who got it.
If not the whole UK and Madrid media would have again accused Barca for favouritism from UEFA

Jayanth on May 29, 2011 at 5:54 am

As Wilshere said MU should have packed the midfield with five as they do against Arsenal with Rooney playing up front….Then they would have stood a chance…

Sean on May 29, 2011 at 6:23 am

It doesn’t matter that Fergie got his tactics wrong. How people thought this Man U team was better equipped to beat a better Barca than the one in ‘09 is beyond me? This was an average team from the beginning of the seasom. They had one of the easiest draws in recent memory. They beat Marseille, beat an aging and out of form Chelsea and a terrible Schalke.

This Final was never going to be different especially with him deploying Giggs and Carrick in the middle. Man Utd actually had a threat in ‘09 in Ronaldo, this season they had a goal poacher who was never going to get enough service to threaten Barca.

Anyone else notice to how close Barca came to scoring some of the greatest team goals of all time? The move that led to Alves’ shot on goal that was saved by VDS was breath taking.

Why are people not talking about Villa’s goal. It was an amazing goal. Villa scored one of the great goals in European Cup Final History.

Didn’t understand why Nani didn’t come in earlier? Utd were never going to have enough possession and time to string passes together to where they can take advantage of Valencia’s crossing ability. They needed someone who can do something off the dribble. Nani had Utd’s second best chance of the game.

I hope British commentators have run out of stats to use against Messi. What next are they going to say? “He has never scored against Stoke.”

Anyone else notice how much quicker Barca’s passing was then usual? You can tell they emphasized moving the ball faster than usual. It also helped that Man U’s pressing was all over the place and that they didn’t play a high line which made no sense.

watcher on May 29, 2011 at 8:10 am

“Anyone else notice how much quicker Barca’s passing was then usual? You can tell they emphasized moving the ball faster than usual. It also helped that Man U’s pressing was all over the place and that they didn’t play a high line which made no sense.”

The thing about the pressing is that managers are deathly afraid of trying it properly against Barca. In order to effectively press (ntm do it for any significant period) you need to push up. Espanyol tried that this season and were promptly eviscerated 5-1. So we have teams trying to hedge their bets, but end up neither doing well off the ball or having the shape or focus to capitalize once they do.

M on May 29, 2011 at 9:06 am

Correct. People often forget that pressing can be a risky tactic too. To press, players have to crowd the man on the ball, temporarily opening up space behind them (before the defenders move forward to plug the space). This space can be exploited by a team that can either pass their way out of the press quickly and accurately or a team that has players who (very important) have the ability to beat a man. Obviously both of these qualities are possessed by Barcelona.

To illustrate, let me use an example of the same tactic used against Barcelona themselves. If you think back to Arsenal’s second goal at the emirates, Koscielny won the ball at the edge of the Arsenal box and passed it on to Bendter who was immediately surrounded by Barca shirts. They stood off however and he was able to turn and pass the ball to Wilshere (and this is the important part) who immediately played a first time to Fabregas. Because of Wilshere’s quick pass, the Barcelona players immediately found themselves behind play. Fabregas then found Nasri with another long perfectly weighted pass, Barcelona were all at sea, their press was broken and the rest is history.

DOF on May 31, 2011 at 2:58 pm

There are several ways to press (3 major types plus several subtypes), not just the Barca style of tight full pitch pressing.

Barcelona are so tight because it reduces the spaces once they lose possession and makes it easy to recover the ball.

The system used by Dunga’s Brazil or Mourinho’s Inter/RM is called stealth pressing, it implies dropping midfield and wide players into high pressure line in the last third.

KKB on May 29, 2011 at 6:38 am

I would have liked to see you address whether United’s failure to man-mark was wise.

Ferguson can a bit of a romantic when it comes to team selections and strategies. I don’t blame him for starting Hernandez, but I think Giggs should have come off the bench late in the game (although he did help set up the first goal).

If you look at the goals United conceded, 1st was an awful mistake by Evra (almost identical to 2009?). He really needs to sort out things out next season. 2nd and 3rd goals were long shots. And both of them were world class strikes. You can’t account for Messi slap-curling the ball around Vidic and you can’t always account for Villa to find the top corner by curling a ball from rest in open play. So I don’t think there’s any shame in the loss.

But United were surely outplayed by Barcelona and at least it doesn’t hurt as much as it does to lose to Chelsea because of Atkinson. Speaking of which, English referees (especially Atkinson and Webb) can not even dream of officiating at a level at which the Hungarian did last night. In spite of his job being made easier by both sets of players (barring Biscuits as usual, the racist idiot) he wasn’t card happy for touching Iniesta/Xavi/Messi.

Congratulations to Barcelona, they deserved it and Messi deserves it. A million miles ahead of Ronaldo.

Stevenson on May 29, 2011 at 8:28 am

Please save your inane Busquets commentary for goal.com. He was one of the best players on the pitch today.

JediRage on May 29, 2011 at 8:34 am

I’m surprised you didn’t call me a monkey. Go ahead, you know you want to. By the way, is it you Steven Smith? Changing names now are we?

Bob on May 29, 2011 at 12:03 pm

Is seems kinda unfair to allege him of being racist. After all, UEFA doesn’t accept stuff like that, and they had footage of the incident, yet they chose not to ban him. Innocent until proven guilty, you know.

A lot of racist apologists around for a ‘tactical website’. Wonder who really should go to goal.com

Culer on May 29, 2011 at 7:04 pm

@Victor
I HATE racism, it’d kinda hard to be racist and support a team featuring Keita and Abidal, Eto’o, Yaya Toure etc. don’t ya think ?
But no it’s better to say Busi is a racist without proving it. If I say you’re a robber does that make you one, robber ?

Victor on May 29, 2011 at 10:05 pm

Yeah I can see how you hate racism by your first comment. Very deep.

Culer on May 30, 2011 at 12:40 am

ever heard about irony, robber ?

Victor on May 30, 2011 at 5:59 am

Right let’s call others monkeys in the name of irony. You’re an awesome relic from the 19th century.

matt on May 29, 2011 at 5:34 pm

There is shame in how much room Messi had to accelerate for his goal. He had four or five steps to stride forward unopposed, when giving him even one free step is asking for trouble. Park was simply a bystander, and Vidic was very slow as well.

David on May 30, 2011 at 8:51 am

As much as I enjoyed the useless tangent you started with your “Biscuits” comment, I’m not sure how any sentient human being could say that anybody other than Valencia did anything in that final to make the ref’s life more difficult. That’s probably why you were told to take it to goal.com. Backtrack and defend yourself all you want, but there’s 90 minutes of football that render the “Biscuits” section of your comment (and all the follow-ups) rather comical.

“We have a challenge with Barcelona, we all do – it’s no consolation to say you’re the second best team, teams likes AC Milan and Real Madrid would say exactly the same. The challenge is always to improve and over the years we’ve done OK at that. This is another challenge – we have some very good players – and where we start to find a way for that is something we’ll mull over this summer. We’re not short of ideas at this club.”

Sir Alex basically admitting that he has no idea how to cope with Barcelona. At least not yet.

SAF tips his hat (class act) but some commenters here still think that Barca is favored by refs, that Pepe’s red for a studs-first tackle gifted the semis to Barca, that Barca wins by diving, that edwin VDS gifted goals, etc etc…dont know how much more this team can do to silence the haters. doesnt matter though, the cup is going to barca. i am glad i get to watch such beautiful football.

Thor Magnus on May 29, 2011 at 8:59 am

To what extent tactical issues played a part is hard to assess, given that so many players put in poor performances. And given that United did not attempt to address the lessons learned two years ago.

Ferguson said beforehand that he had learnt his lesson after the 09 defeat. Yet he failed to address the most glaring problem faced then: lack of control of the midfield area. Fergie said then that Fletcher would have made a difference. I don’t think so. A really good defensive midfielder is surely necessary, but Fletcher is a bit overrated. Hargreaves at his best would have made a massive difference. But, for lack of a better choice, Fletcher or Anderson should have played last night. United ought to have adopted a 451 from the outset, hoping to contain Barca for the first hour, and then bring on Hernandez when barca were tiring. Fergie should have played Rooney alone up front, with Park to follow Busquets. Nani and Valencia on the flanks and Carrick and Fletcher/Anderson in DM. This may have worked. Yesterday’s line-up was the same one that beat Chelsea three times in recent months. But Chelsea and Barcelona play so differently.

Before the final, all discussions were on how to stop Barca. Even after the final, its the same.

And most people are talking here about Barca pressing. Let me tell you that Barca were only like 70% of their pressing game yday. Watch some liga games against teams like Villareal, Sevilla, Bilbao and you would see what Barca pressing is. And on the CL the second leg in the pre quarters against Arsenal. That was the cent percent pressing of Barca, because they started behind.

Mark on May 29, 2011 at 9:37 am

I don’t normally question Sir Alex, but it was poor team selection that has cost United again. I don’t understand why at least one of Fletcher/Anderson didn’t make the starting line up. Carrick will probably be made a scapegoat again, but he was United’s best midielder; the rare times United did have the ball he was playing some decent passes, but he was basically taking on Barcelona’s midfield on his own.

Valencia was dreadful last night, his attacking influence was zero and he was regularly caught in possession. Park worked hard, not as hard as I have seen him, but Dani Alves was still getting forward at will and Park didn’t trouble him in an attacking sense. Giggs just didn’t have the mobility to get around the pitch, nor the aggression to get into Barcelona faces, and if we’re counting Rooney as one of the midfield he was alot more concerned with attacking as opposed to sticking on Busquets, and put that as a combination, and you have Barcelona dominating the midfield for absolute fun. Xavi was his usual self, pulling the strings and just completely dominating the game, Iniesta is just a wonderful player, Busquets dealt well with Rooney and was good in possession as always, and for the first time last night, I’ve started to believe Messi is better than Ronaldo. However, having said that, United dealt with him very poorly.

Surely this ends the argument about Messi not being able to prove himself in England though. I would love him to come over and play in England, but for people to basically be saying, ‘would he do it against Ryan Shawcross and Christopher Samba’? is surely dead now after last night he was going round Ferdinand and Vidic (two big, strong, ‘English type players’) like they weren’t even there at times.

In conclusion, Sir Alex pretty much did try to beat Barcelona at there own game, but failed miserably. Arsenal are pretty much the exception to the rule in terms of how to beat Barcelona, the real blueprint comes from the way Inter did it last year, and Madrid in the Copa Del Rey, and that is you STOP them from playing. The thing is, United have players who can stop Barcelona playing, Fletcher, Anderson, Park to name just three, and I’m so disappointed after what happened in Rome two years ago, Sir Alex went with Carrick and Giggs as a central midfield duo AGAIN.

3rnald0 on May 30, 2011 at 9:02 pm

carricks pass completion was very poor on the night. approximately 75% i saw! He should be aiming for high 80s or even 90%

Spassapparat on May 29, 2011 at 10:17 am

it was nice to see that barca quickly found a way around manu pressing in xavi dropping between the cb and dictating the game trough long passes from there. since manu stopped pressing so immediately we dont really know how effective that idea is against a pressing opponent. would like to see an arsenal-barca rematch in the near future.

JH on May 29, 2011 at 10:19 am

I’d also like to point out that the Villa and Messi goals came from shots outside the box, in the space that a third central midfielder would have been occupying. Man Utd left far too much space between the lines, and at the same time, didn’t close down enough – Xavi often had loads of time.

ProFF7 on May 29, 2011 at 11:37 am

Oh I didnt see your commentary, I just posted about that!

This is very rare to see in Barcelona thru a year, they prefer to pass their way to the goal, but yesterday they were doing it again and again

Anonymous on May 31, 2011 at 5:55 pm

this is untrue..its another of those english commentary misconceptions that barca (and arsenal) get labelled with…barca scored the most goals from outside the area in la liga this year. i hate the disdain of people saying “they try to walk thier way into goal”…its beautiful footy. just enjoy

ProFF7 on June 1, 2011 at 3:40 am

Man, Im from Lleida, Catalonia. I follow Barça for 20 years now. I watch 95% of all games barcelona play in a season. They sure make goals from outside the area, but its not something they try every match, specially not like saturday’s final.

Why is there no mention of Giggs clear offside position in that goal? You could see just about all the Barca defenders stopped to look at the linesman. Did someone take out a super injunction or something?

Brenton on May 29, 2011 at 5:42 pm

The media pressure works. All the whining from the English and Real Madrid paid off in getting ManUtd one goal at least.

Victor on May 29, 2011 at 5:48 pm

Media pressure? lolwut?? I wonder how that MP managed to ‘let slip’ about Giggs’ affair.

Of course, he had the best interests of British football at heart when he said it.

matt on May 29, 2011 at 5:43 pm

No one wants to make a stink about referees, especially since the rest of the game was such a battering. The Rooney goal didn’t make the slightest difference to Barcelona’s performance. Every angle I’ve seen showed that Giggs was offside, but the English press need some silver lining to hang on to. Rooney’s great finish is really the only positive that they can take from this game, as well as the great buildup that led to it. It was much less even as a contest than the 2009 final (United only had 1 shot on target yesterday out of 5 attempts, as opposed to 2 shots on target out of 12 attempts. In 2009 Barca only had 51% of possession, compared to 66% yesterday.).

From a neutral’s point of view as much as I’m in awe of this Barcelona team,I admit I have grown even more respect for ManU and SAF since last night, for they themselves respected their history and achievements to date.Barcelona, at the moment, can dwarf any team in the world on their day, so it’s up to the opponent to choose the way they will go about it.SAF chose the “romantic” way -I wouldn’t dare call it naive- and that deserves some praise.Of course, ManU was lucky -thankfully- not to leave the pitch bearing the burden of an even higher scoreline.Still United’s supporters should by no means feel embarrassed
On Barcelona’s side I’d hate to rumble about the significance of Abidal’s inclusion,but using him for the whole 90 mins and on top of that letting him lift the trophy was something very very special,even if it did involve quite some PR in it,since nothing’s 100% pure these days.Nevertheless it can be unimaginable support to people who are struggling with cancer
On the tactical side of things,Barca is far superior than anyone ,yes, but what I love watching is how they fine-tune the team in areas one thinks they can be exposed.Last night it was the brilliant application of the offside trap that made a fool of everyone -yes, including me- who insisted that Hernandez had to start the game

ProFF7 on May 29, 2011 at 11:34 am

(sorry for my english)

One thing I would like to note that I think that has not been talked before.

I watch 97% of all Barcelona matches every year, and something that has surprised me in this match, and is hard to ignore, is the amount of chances Barça has created from medium distance shots. Specially times when a player would hold the ball in the area, then do a back pass for a arriving striker. Villa’s goal is a clear example but it was happening many times

This is probably very common in other teams and in england, but for Barça, it is strange to see thru all the year, even more strange to see many of these chances in a single match.

Do you think this was tactical and Barcelona players were instructed to do this? or that it was merely circunstancial?

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 11:56 am

Made the same observation. These ‘tactics’ resulted in three very nice goals of Barca. Just thinking about it, maybe it was an instruction by Pep, because he knew
a) How good Vidic and Rio are, so better get a shot done before they are close
b) there would not be a great deal of penalties be awarded for clashes in the box (cl final).
That goes the same line: try to convert before a opportunity is lost.

ProFF7 on May 29, 2011 at 12:18 pm

Yeah, also to avoid the dread counterattacking from ManU, and it seems it worked.

Gerrry on May 29, 2011 at 11:37 am

Giggs, van der Sar and Ferguson looked past their sell by date. I never understood his 4-4-2 this season for exactly the reason that it would fail against Barca or Madrid, and so it did. Mourinho showed the way to beat Barca – the Copa del Rey final was the perfect idea. Madrid had 4 or 5 great chances in 120 minutes, Barca had 0. As if to acknowledge this, in the next clasico Barca gave up on their natural game in favour of dirty tactics to get players sent off. Ferguson has a lot to answer. It used to be that as a Utd fan, I feared the day Fergie retired but Mourinho would be a serious upgrade on this performance. Anytime you want it Jose, just say the word.

dearieme on May 29, 2011 at 11:57 am

Agreed: Sir Odious looked like an old man all at sea. His squad is below average by ManU standards, and Barcelona are superb. But still, there was no need for it to be quite so one-sided.

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 12:05 pm

I agree, but the 4-4-1-1 of ManU usually becames a 4-2-3-1 with Rooney dropping deep.

In this game he was basically a striker and not the de facto No. 10 he usually is.

Hernandez should have picked up Busqets and Rooney – Xavi like Milito and Sneijder did last year, while the wingers should have constantly switched from man marking the fullbacks to zonal marking double up.

MU actually need a new midfield, with 2 playmakers that defend and a proper destroyer (like Pepe) and 2 very active wide players that both attack, defend and support. These all rounders that are a 7 at everything but a 8/9/10 at nothing, don’t cut it anymore.

In fact all english teams need that.

Ian on May 29, 2011 at 2:49 pm

What people forget though is Iniesta didn’t play against Inter and if he did they wouldn’t have been able to man mark Xavi,Iniesta,Messi and Busquets.

tom toker on May 30, 2011 at 4:48 am

what people forget when they talk about messi is that he has the 2nd and 3rd best players on the planet with him.
in what sport do the the best players on the planet play together…..

Even in a fantasy draft you CAN NOT put up a better midfiled than Xavi,Iniesta,Messi and the sublime Busquets.
You cant.

The three best players in the world are in the same midfield and I dont expect anything to change until a team can match them there.

Im not a huge Valdez fan, the barca defence is good but not one of the greatest in recent memory and the rotating cast of world class forwards make it interchangeable. I can make a case for a few teams that have better keepers, defence or strikers but no one on the planet can touch those 4 midfielders.

Barcelona is not the greatest team ever.

They are a very good team with probably the greatest midfield ever (which is where the discussion should be about)

Alf on May 31, 2011 at 12:54 am

People also forget that most teams double, triple, or even quadruple team Messi. C. Ronaldo is occasionally double teamed but even then it’s rare.

Name one other player in the world that can take on 5 players in the champions league semifinals and still put the ball in the net. His teamates are phenomenal but many of his goals are his own doing entirely.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 12:19 pm

So you conveniently ignore Madrid’s play with fire fouling tactics? You want United to play this same type of football? Classy.

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 12:38 pm

So you conveniently ignore Barca’s play of diving/simulating ?

Pepe never touched Alvez, and Motta didn’t deserved to be sent of on account of Busqets simulating.

Yeah I want a team to do everything it can to win, not open themselves up like naively.
Barcelona defend with 11 players and so should everyone.

Clearly, beside Guardiola, only Mourinho understands that.

Anonymous on May 29, 2011 at 12:46 pm

The initial poster already made Barca’s tactics clear, do you always overlook the details?

Loco Wu on May 29, 2011 at 3:32 pm

The only thing that coward called Mourinho understands is how to play like the best team in the world except when playing against the best team in the world.

I absolutely hated how the Classico’s were played out this year thanks to Mourinho, ultimately one cannot ignore the theatrics from Barca however that was well employed against the tactics Mourinho put in place. It is the perfect counter to Jurassic Football TM.

That clown makes people believe that everything in the world is against him, making others forget the favorable decisions his own teams also enjoyed in the past.

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 4:53 pm

So I guess you disagree that Mourinho is a great football manager, probably the greatest.

Pep is good coach for Barcelona with great players, but he hasn’t proven anything else.

Bielsa tried to play like this with Chile but lost for lacking quality players.
Michels after leaving Ajax tried total football but didn’t do anything, because he didn’t have the players.
Sacchi didn’t do anything with Milan once the great were old, exhausted or injured.

Football is about doing the best with the players you have.

And yes, football is a circus.

XavinIesta on June 1, 2011 at 10:36 pm

Yeah yeh yeah..
If fools like mourinho and his team avoided thai boxing n instead tried to play football then they’d have 11 Players.. Stop crying foul when you start the whole business of committing series of fouls..! U only got what u deserved..!! Actually less

guil9 on May 29, 2011 at 12:58 pm

No please, Manu is a great team but it has the bad luck of finding the best team in the world (and one of the best sides of history) in front of in 2 CL finals.

Ryan on May 29, 2011 at 5:40 pm

Pedro’s scrapped goal in the copa final was less offside than Giggs was in United’s goal. And Real should have had at least one player sent off to boot!

ProFF7 on June 1, 2011 at 3:56 am

Your comment is a joke. Plain stupid. 0 chances for Barcelona? lol. I bet you didnt even watch the full cup match. Sure, madrid was better in first half, pressed very hard and had a few chances, but in the second half they paid for their effort and looked exhausted. Barcelona dominated them and laid siege to Casillas, only a miracle (Guess why they call him San Iker) saved them from receiving 3 or more goals. Instead they got a unlikely goal on counterattacking when Barcelona was dominating. Download the match and watch it, it was almost a miracle that Madrid won.

XavinIesta on June 1, 2011 at 10:28 pm

Are you on drugs???

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 11:48 am

Anybody too felt that van der Sar was not at his best against the goals of Pedro and Messi?
Maybe that – besides the fact that Manu only had two central/defensive midfielders – was a reason for Barcelona to try their untypical long-distance shots?
Or is it that Guardiola tries implementing range shots into Barca’s repertoire, finally ?

juliano on May 29, 2011 at 1:22 pm

yes, it was not expected they shotting long-distance, they rarely do that. but people forget that they also have a pragmatic side

Brenton on May 29, 2011 at 5:40 pm

Van der Sar ‘at his best’ still is very poor at defending low shots. I don’t know why more teams don’t shoot that way against him. Milan in 07 is the main case I can recall.

jase on May 29, 2011 at 12:08 pm

Not taking anything away from a scintillating Barca performance.

But why did Man U play a two man midfield against the best 3 man midfield in the world?

It reminded me of of Germany in the world cup.

They played a 4:3:3 and demolished Australia, England and Argentina who all had a man less in midfield and got overrun.

oh and guess who eventually knocked Germany out?!!

DOF on May 29, 2011 at 12:29 pm

Germany played 4-2-3-1 at the World Cup, but with Schweinsteiger as a box-to-box, Klose as False 9 and the 2 wide players cutting inside, it was like a 4-3-3.

jase on May 29, 2011 at 1:36 pm

Sure, but at the end of the day Germany had a man extra in midfield and dominated large parts of the play.

Unlike some other posters I will assume Ferguson went into yesterdays game with a game plan to win.

What was it?

How was a 2 man midfield ever going to work against this Barcelona side?

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 2:27 pm

Germany played 4-2-3-1, although against Spain a 4-3-3 (4-1-2-3) would have been better.
I would, in retrospect, have liked to see Schweinsteiger-Khedira-Kroos in the centre, Podolski and Özil on the wings (Müller had precautiously been shown his second yellow for nothing against Argentina), plus Klose as punta.
At least, Germany had their central offenders (Klose, Özil) dropping deep every now and then to help defending, something Manu yesterday seems to have lacked.

DOF on May 30, 2011 at 10:40 pm

Yeah that was strange since Rooney is usually more of a 10 than a 9 and ManU is usually more of a 4-2-3-1 then a 4-4-1-1/4-4-2.

Sebas on May 29, 2011 at 12:26 pm

(as a Manchester United fan)
People should stop criticizing’s Ferguson’s first 11 choice because let’s face it, no matter how he might have shuffled this squad they simply did not have the midfield quality needed to out-play Barca. And by this I do not mean dominating the midfield, but simply being able to pick forward passes while under heavy pressure. Giggs had a bad night and Scholes is too old to be able to play a whole game at such intensity as we saw last night.

As is was, United were restricted to long balls only, which Barca did a fantastic job at neutralizing with their high offside line.

You cannot simply say who should man-mark who and point to Mourinho’s tactics and expect this to be your best shot at winning. You can only play according to your players and last night I believe Ferguson used the best 11 he could have mustered.
Playing Fletcher or Anderson or dropping Hernandez or whatever other mix in midfield we can discuss, none of these would have offered the quality needed to complete the task needed in order to win: move the ball forward and create chances.

We lost to the better team, I congratulate Barca for this and United for playing a clean, positive game albeit a losing one.

Mark on May 29, 2011 at 9:42 pm

Fergie should have played 4-3-3 with Fletcher-Carrick-Park, pairing Park with Xavi and Fletcher with Iniesta. Similar to the 4-3-3 Mourinho employed against Barcelona. In front Rooney-Chicharito-Nani/Valencia

XavinIesta on June 1, 2011 at 10:54 pm

Touché!’
I’m a barca fan, but if we were defeated, though down, I’d have been happy at least with the knowledge that it’s to Man U, a proper footballing side, and win or lose, they play with style, clean game, n with a positive attitude..! So my best wishes to Man U, it’s players n SAF!

As I told a Liverpool fan after the CL semi’s, I was confident of barca winning CL, but wud be happy to lose to Man U, especially as we had defeated arrogant foul mouthed Madrid! (that wud’ve been enough) heh

So being CL champions is in a way just a bonus !! Cheers

james curzon on May 29, 2011 at 1:10 pm

I think most of us can agree, that we have witnessed one of (if not THE) best teams EVER. Even if united had got it right in this game, they would have still lost. There were a few errors in selection, but that emanates from uniteds desire to play part of their own game. Now, given the way barca overload the centre of the pitch, and look to play down the middle as often as possible, I believe a defensive screening player is a necessity. Bearing in mind the success mourinho had with a central block of 3 players, would a 4 3 2 1 formation be a viable option in attempting to take down this football behemoth? The 2 could play roughly false 9/ attacking midfield roles, and would leave you 5v4 centrally. This obviously leaves the flanks rather exposed, but given the fact barca rarely look to cross the ball and frequently work it infield (where we would have 5v4 theoretically) I see this as less of a problem. Concerning the depth of your team it is impossible to press barcelona high up the whole game, but just as equally I believe dropping to the 18 line allows them to find their flow too easily. In the 2-1 game at the emirates, arsenal played halfway house, defending just into their own half, united did this at the beginning after the initial flurry, and it was reasonably effective. What do you think? Just a few thoughts…

From a tactical standpoint, the 4-4-2 got overran in midfield. The opening 10 minutes of pressure, just like a few years ago, produced no goal and left the team gassed and exposed for 80 minutes.

From a personnel standpoint, Ryan Giggs had a very off game and looked lost in midfielder. Javier Hernandez did have a nice assist to Rooney, but never got into the game (in part because his team couldn’t hold the ball).

And just in terms of shit luck/probability, United needed for Messi to have an average game and Villa and Pedro to struggle. Carrick did a decent job on Messi (as decent as humanly possible), but Villa and Pedro both have fantastic finishes.

3rnald0 on May 29, 2011 at 8:15 pm

pressing intensely for 10 minutes doesnt leave you gassed for the rest of the game….even more so considering man utd had a large chunk of the ball in those 10 minutes. Man utd could have seemed “gassed” as they couldnt press barca later in the game, but that is more tactical than physical as barca had a numerical advantage in the middle.

L Dialey on May 29, 2011 at 3:16 pm

Personally , I think that whilst it cannot be argued that united were the better team , they couldve won that game. I think that almost all of united’s players played decently enough considering the quality of opponents, and they certainatly gave a better account of themselves than in 2009. Also i thought it was interesting how the barcelona wingers refused to run at the united fullbacks in the game, they almost allways looked inside for a pass rather than getting to the byline. In fact , it appears that it is only affelay who is ever interested in doing this.Just thought that it was an interseting feature, and im not sure how it contributes to barca’s attacking play. Any ideas?

Loco Wu on May 29, 2011 at 3:45 pm

United could have won, however as already known in any team sport exhaustive tactical preparation cannot replace the other aspect of the game : psychological. Although Barca had a fantastic game I was quite shocked at the work rate of the forwards who barely put any pressure on the defenders or would assist with defending like the Barca 3 forwards do. Technically I would rate the Man U players higher than Chelsea however the work rate displayed by Chelsea in 2009 for example was tremendous and we all know how hard it was for Barca. They really took the game to Barca from the first minute.

matthew on May 29, 2011 at 5:33 pm

why did Fergie shout at Rooney for keeping goalside of Busquets in the first half, was he telling Rooney to go beyond him to occupy the marauding Barca full backs you think ?

3rnald0 on May 29, 2011 at 7:29 pm

several times he wasnt goalside of busquets, and so couldnt press him. I would be shouting at him for that…fergie probably was too.

matt on May 29, 2011 at 6:05 pm

What do people make of Park and Valencia’s roles? United were obviously a man down in the center, and had Park and Valencia cut inside to help reduce this disadvantage (This was somewhat of a surprise, because everybody thought it was going to be Rooney dropping deep). That is standard for Park, but Valencia generally hugs the right touchline. Anyway, I thought that they were essentially in no man’s land. Park tried to match up numbers in midfield and simultaneously track Dani Alves, but failed to do both. Valencia tried to match numbers in midfield and shift out wide of Abidal when United were in possession. This compromise tactic left United exposed, both in the center and on the flanks, with neither winger performing on offense or defense. Park’s main contribution was to admire Messi dashing into space for his goal, while Valencia’s sole purpose seemed to be committing fouls (I thought he could have received two yellows to be honest, he was a thug from start to finish, and his body check on Messi deserves more criticism). At times it seemed like SAF was imitating the Villarreal tactics of 4-2-2-2, and his team met an identical scoreline (3-1).

“and then Messi being unoccupied dragged Patrice Evra towards him, opening up space for Pedro Rodriguez to fire home”….
I don’t see that statement as being fully true; The sole reason Evra moved in was due to Pedro (who was his man at the time) making an inward run; this, while Messi dropped back in allowing that run. Vidic was the primary culprit as he should have switched off to take Pedro…watch the replay from the back…Pedro comes heel-to-heel with Vidic while the Serbian neither marked him nor Messi. In fact, he closed in further towards Ferdinand allowing both Pedro and Messi even more space. For me, I feel Evra was right to assume the switch in marking was on.

Joe on May 29, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Typical mistake.
Manchester often wasted possession. You cannot do that against Barcelona. The players ofter were happy to get the ball after defending for minutes, and tried an immediate attack…instead of keeping the ball.

The best method against teams like barcelona: not wasting possession and keeping the ball

this playing your own game lark vs Barca clearly doesn’t work. why didn’t fergie change it earlier. either man mark Messi. or… i’d love to see someone play a sweeper against them. one thing about Barca is in a way, they are predictable. by that i mean, won’t hit long balls over top to run on to, or any kind of aerial game ( even from corners !). the weakness of a sweeper normally is that it screws up your offside options. but Barca are generally just trying to walk it in & pass right thru’ you. so why not just get bodies in there & block it all out. it might seem ultra negative, but like classic Rehhagel from 2004, eventually you wear down your opponent down & do carve out some decent chances. Greece v Arg at the 2010 w cup springs to mind also when Greece stayed in the game relatively comfortably for a long time, and of course, Man u would have better players than Greece to launch counter attacks with.

You have to look at the ManU side and consider whether any of them could get into the Barca XI. Me and my mates thought only Vidic would do it – and a *not-playing-cack* Evra. Even then, perhaps neither fit into the Barca “philosophy”.

So you look at Giggs, who’s of course a legend and a decent centre midfielder in the Premiership.. But at this level, against the top side in World Football and he’s dreadfully out of his depth. Looking back 5 years, if you were to say Giggs would be starting the ‘11 CL final at CM, well I’m sure most MUFC fans would consider that bollocks.

A good strategy isn’t necessarily a winning one but one that manipulates the percentages well (as J.Wilson once said) and I think Fergie approached this as well as he possibly could of with the resources he had. The inclusion of chicarito was probably a nod to the fact that Barca would dominate, but the wee Mexican is exactly the kind of player who can take one of the few chances that would appear – plus has pace to burn and excels in the air (two things pre-match you’d consider weak areas for Barca)

Could he have fielded a more appropriate selection? I don’t think so. Fletcher wasn’t deemed to be fit enough and Nani’s gone off the boil of late. With Fletcher I guess there’s a case for a 4-1-4-1 but Fletcher is better pushing high as one of the more forward CM’s so who would play between the lines? Carrick? Plus this would force Rooney into a lone striker role, where against better opp he tends to become frustrated and simply isn’t as effective as he is as a playmaker/destroyer.

The game emphasised the gulf in class between a poor Premiership season (for the big guns) and Barca (and arguably Madrid). England’s biggest 3 all require significant redevelopment. I’m just wondering (actually, I don’t doubt it) if SAF will be able to build yet *another* top quality side. Not a MUFC fan, but I hope he can.

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 10:06 pm

What about Anderson, injured? He looked really good against Schalke. Would have taken him in instead of Chicharito, try not to concede for 60-70 minutes, and then bring him and perhaps Nani against a more tired Barca. Sound’s mourinhoish, i have to admit

mmmmmm well, I get your point, but there is a balance between adding any old midfielder to make the 5, and playing a striker of much higher ability. I just don’t think SAF trusts Anderson that much; he’s a bit lazy and doesn’t seem that motivated.

I find it surprising the lack of criticism VdS has received, to me it’s the most glaring omission from the commentary about the game. On the first goal he was beaten to his near post while his defender was closing down the far post angle. Granted, he may not have saved it anyway, but for an experienced keeper of his caliber I thought he may have been able to make a play on the ball. The 2nd was a quick strong shot from Messi that beat him…right down the middle of the goal. Have to think if VdS brings his usual quality, he saves at least one of the two. Barcelona were superior, but he was utterly mediocre on a day when United needed a big game from their goalkeeper.

Barcelona had 12 shots on goal… 24 overal… it might not have been VdS’s night, but in the end he avoided an even greater humiliation….

Barcelona had chances to score 5+ goals.

Cory on May 29, 2011 at 11:29 pm

Right, but to defeat Barcelona your keeper must give one of their best performances of the season and Van der Sar simply wasn’t up to the task. Of course it’s nit-picking, but you have to wonder if either the first or 2nd goals were saved how the game might have changed. Like I said, Barcelona were certainly as deserving as any champions have ever been, but had VdS made what would have been admittedly terrific saves then the narrative may have been written differently.

Victor on May 29, 2011 at 10:03 pm

I find your lack of observation and intelligence surprising. 12 shots on goal, 3 let in. Also saved that Dani Alves shot that deserved to be a goal.

Diverinho on May 29, 2011 at 10:09 pm

VdS had a few good saves, you are right. But re-watch the first two goals of Barca. To me they still look like it was mostly his fault there.

Cory on May 29, 2011 at 11:32 pm

I wouldn’t say the first one was his fault, rather that had he been in a better tactical position and played the angle a bit better then he may have not given Pedro so much goal to shoot at. It was from a close range and he still may have scored anyway, but it warrants mentioning that he could have done more to prevent it.

Darth Vader on May 30, 2011 at 4:30 am

I find your lack of observation and intelligence……disturbing…..

james curzon on May 30, 2011 at 2:02 pm

on better days, he probably would have saved the first 2 however both situations favoured the goal-scorer . But i disagree concerning his apparent fault for the first 2 goals. The first was virtually a one-on-one, an whilst he could have done better, the glaring space between the lines allowed that situation to develop when it shouldn’t have. The second shot he was unsighted for, and messi was allowed far too much time (illustrating for me the classic dilemma when playing barca: Press and be picked off in-behind, or drop off and give them time to do what they like doing) for me, park should have closed him. Besides that he made some reasonably simple saves, but covered the near misses very well (2 or villa shots and the pedro effort from inside 6 yard box) .The area i did think he performed poorly was distribution. When united retireved possesion they could have used a bit of time to re-group and compose themselves, but it was always the long ball down the middle too quickly. They wanted hernandez early over the top, but it was unrealistic to attempt it almost every time.

Cory on May 30, 2011 at 7:44 pm

It was never my intention to insinuate that he was at fault on the first two goals, only that on a better day he would have saved at least one of the two. I don’t think there is much, if anything we disagree about, and the situations indeed favoured the player in possession. As I mentioned however, VdS failed to live up to the, admittedly lofty, standard by which we hold him accountable. He’s a top class keeper that didn’t play like one, and were he a lesser player then my commentary wouldn’t be applicable.

van der sar’s saves ratio is much worse this year than last yr. i keep stats on this area as i feel it’s a seriously under-analysed area. and so vitally important to whether a team wins or loses. in 09/10 in lge, VDS had a goals against saves ratio of 13/58= 0.22. thats excellent. last yr joe hart had 0.31, friedel 0.31, gomes 0.28, reina 0.35, cech 0.375. this year VDS is significantly down to 32/81= 0.40. joe hart is the best at 0.30, cech has 0.34, foster 0.31, gomes 0.33. according to soccernet barca had 12 shots on target. don’t know if any cleared from line as VDS got given just 8 saves ( rather than 9 ) obviously 3 let in. so an indiv game ratio of 3/8= 0.375. i.e pretty average/poor.

another site with interesting g/k rankings. the saves figures are different on here, but tends to rank them in the same order i have as far as i can see, with foster, gomes, hart & cech all with better saves ratios than vds.

kramxel on May 29, 2011 at 9:28 pm

Saying United came to play their game is a poor man’s excuse for today’s football demands.
We are talking about top level football, not bottom feeders from a regional division…

For Ferguson to say that, it’s a really poor way of judging a match.

On the tactical side, there was one clear statement: Barcelona are a much better team with overal better players in midfield and attack. Recognizing it is one of the ways to find a solution.
It was obvious through both teams’ campaigns that difference in style and in quality.

This was a final… a one game decision. It was necessary for United to play a little with their formation and their marking scheme. They didn’t change a dime and were, in consequence, obliterated in midfield.

Having a 3rd man in midfield was a must.. and it should be remembered how well Rooney is upfront in a team that relies on counter-attacking first, which would obviously be the case of United for this game.

Rooney, playing behind someone, despite being as energetic as he is, doesn’t drop that deep in his movements, nor could he, as it would leave Hernandez completely alone. This meant Busquets had a field day as he played a little higher than normal, forcing Rooney to drop deeper, and the 2 CBs for Barcelona played realy close together and never allowed Hernandez to gain their backs.

This meant Busquets could easily hand off the ball to the forward movements of Xavi and Iniesta, which in turn forced Giggs to play almost side by side with Carrick… Add in the fact that neither Carrick nor Giggs are particularly energetic and the picture in midfield is now very clear. Xavi and Iniesta getting great positions to run at or past the 2 United midfielders… and I didn’t even mention Messi.

Messi had a superb game… and most of it is beacause no one has really found a solution for his false 9 role. (Not taking anything away from Messi’s quality)

Normally teams who play a false 9 struggle to get goal scoring chances… but with Villa, a superb finisher, and Xavi and Iniesta to play through balls, that is never a problem for Barcelona. The fact that Messi is also a superb finisher, only adds injury to insult.

Messi drops deep and Carrick has to pick him off… one of the CBs rushes forward to close the gap… and suddenly, United are playing a 3 man defense… against 2 players who are great in diagonal runs, Villa and Pedro. As Messi wins most of his slaloms through the middle and neither Vidic or Ferdinand are at their best when out of position, we are talking about a 3 on 3 in a lot of situations…

United failed to cope with the false 9 role… they weren’t the first, nor will be the last, to do it…

Untill someone can cope with that, Barcelona will continue to dominate Europe.

P.S: The best tactic I’ve seen this year that held of Barcelona was Gijon’s energetic 4-2-3-1 that was so dinamic in it’s own half pressing. United lacked precisely that… energy in midfield.

Ho on May 30, 2011 at 12:56 am

Agree: Gijon gave a real hard time to Barca, both in defence and attack. (I always reckon Gijon as one of the best teams in Europe in terms of attack movement and pass fluency.) What they did was to make the space between the lines as minimal as possible, with the defenders standing just a bit outside of the area. Gijon was pretty good at dealing with both through passes and diagonal cuts, thanks to their speedy defenders.

Infidel on May 29, 2011 at 10:48 pm

Ferguson is the one responsible for the massacre that happened at the final. Barca would still have one if fergie added a midfielder instead of hernandez, but there wouldn’t have been that big a gulf. I mean really, carrick and giggs? You could clone them and have four at midfield and they’d still be outclassed by barca.

Fergie, master tactician? You’d think he would have figured it out by half time at least.

Mark on May 29, 2011 at 11:37 pm

‘Barca’ means small boat. ‘Barça’ is the team that win the CL last night.

most people don’t have a ç on their keyboard though so it can be a hassle. you know what people mean.

watcher on May 30, 2011 at 2:55 am

Wow, pedant much? Maybe you’ll like to take on the rest of the English press while you’re at it?

Qwe on May 30, 2011 at 1:39 am

Congratulations, Mark,
With that comment, you’ve just won the “most pompous asshole” award on Zonal Marking….

Qwe on May 30, 2011 at 2:02 am

Out of all the CL matches this season, I think that Shakhtar( at Barca) best demonstrated how to attack Barca, who had a terrible time dealing with Luis Adriano and Willian using their pace and strength to get behind (the usually out of position) Alves and the very slow Barca central defense(without Puyol). This tactic worked time and time again for Shakhtar; if Luis Adriano’s finishing had been better, they could have scored 3-4 goals. In fact, it was one of the few times I’ve seen Barca look repeatedly vulnerable this season.
Yet, SAF seemed to overlook this in favour of?…

John on May 30, 2011 at 2:11 am

Was Messi really superb? He was poor for a major part of the game; lost the ball quite often and created next to nothing before his goal. He improved later on in the game, but sayin he was superb is neglecting 2/3 of the game. What happens towards the end of a game tends to be the image that sticks to the mind; people easily forget the big picture if small parts later on are untypical for the whole.

Greeko on May 30, 2011 at 3:40 am

You’re a moron with no soccer sense at all. I can’t even believe I am replying. Maybe I am an even bigger moron than you for answering.

I don’t think anyone will stop Barcelona until a team that can challenge them for posession emerge.

70%+ posesession reduces you to about 25 minutes playing time, which means Barcelona can press virtually all game and not tire because they get lots of recovery time between presses to get their breach back.

ten years ago, when Barcelona only managed 60% posession, they looked a lot more vulerable thany this lot.

Tonathan Wilson has suggested you can stop Barcelona with 3-3-3-1 which makes some sense if Messi is playing his false 9 role. But all Barcelona will do is swith Villa For Messi, turn the game into a classic 3 at the back vs three up front battle, stretch the defenders and pour through the middle

Victor on May 30, 2011 at 6:03 am

You mean Jonathan Wilson, the history teacher? You know, stuff about football in the 1900s?

Trunken on May 30, 2011 at 12:14 pm

Won’t be a problem, if the side manages to switch between three- and four-men defense.

james curzon on May 30, 2011 at 7:32 pm

to say you can stop barca merely by changing shape is rather fanciful. This 3-3-3-1 theory doesnt really wash with me. Yes theoretically most situations are accounted for, but I think a back 3 is suicidal against the movement barca are capable of both on and off the ball.

DOF on May 30, 2011 at 11:08 pm

Wilson is only right in 50% of cases.
He talks a lot of nonsense, but then so does ZM (the stuff about classical No. 10, attacking fullbacks is mostly complete nonsense).

james curzon on May 31, 2011 at 2:22 pm

concerning wilson, my thoughts exactly. He does talk a reasonable game, but the fact he is nothing more than a media observer (as opposed to someone who has been there and done it) make him appear pretentious in my opinion.

Neil on May 30, 2011 at 2:15 am

I’ll admit i havent read the comments before this, i read some but there’s too many (And not everybody is actually discussing the game, more asserting controversial opinions with no justification, oh well…)

Hernandez was feeding off scraps all game, and lets be honest he had a rotten game, when he got the ball he really didnt seem to know what to do with it and he was offside too much. and IMO Berbatov would have done better here. At the end of the day it wasn’t pace that mattered, it was intelligence and touch and Hernandez failed to do that at all.

It was too similar to 2009 ! Man U were even playing in white!! To be honest MNU is the only team in the world that could have made this as much of a competition as it was. Rome = competition for 10 minutes. Wembley = competition for 45 minutes. Someday Man U will be able to play them for 90 minutes!!! But in all honesty United had a woeful second half. Didnt attack at all and if you do that at least defend!! But the defending second half got farcical. Two long distance shots just shouldn’t have been conceded. One, ok, mistakes happen, but two is too much from that range, at this level.

And the Pedro goal, Evra just shouldn’t be caught out diagonally like that. Bad concentration, but at least Evra had a decent night going forward. United looked good when they crammed the midfield and broke quickly, with Rooney at the heart of the breaks. I personally would have started Fletcher or Scholes as a CM instead of Hernandez. Valencia too, had a terrible game. Dont know if Valencia and Hernandez can cut it at this level. Valencia really should have had a sending off for his constant harrassment of Messi. Gave nothing going forward, a couple of mishit crosses.

But on another night Barcelona would have had about 10 goals, no joke, they made about 10 clear-cut chances on goal and United were lucky indeed the scoreline didn’t shame them any more.

Ultimately i think beating Barca in a one-off final isn’t impossible but it involves sacrificing attacking panache for some defensive steel and Ferguson doesnt seem to want to do that. A Hiddink-inspired Chelsea could do it. but word is Guardiola is off somewhere else… he too believes in 3-year success cycles, as Sacchi did

We are very lucky to watch live a team like Barcelona. They are simply the best. Especially in the midfield, Xavi made the diferrence. Manchester tried to play football (not like Real Madrid) and they paid it. Sir Alex made mistakes but he is not magician. He could not stop Barcelona.

omarlittle on May 30, 2011 at 1:49 pm

100% agree, no way to stop Barça if they are motivated. just try to play 5-5-0, and pray for 0-0. Just in matches the play relaxed (Hercules, Mallorca….) there are any chance, if they play motivated you only can dream in a 0-0.

3rnald0 on May 30, 2011 at 9:12 pm

rubbish. barca are motivated every single game. No team ever wants to lose. and to say they werent motivated for last years semi final. Its about tactics not motivation. No one can deal with messi’s movement and so until someone can barca will continue winning.

marck on May 30, 2011 at 6:59 am

This game once again proved that 4-5-1 is the best way to win against this barca side. It was really funny to see United get beaten like this without learning any lessons from 2 years ago. What on earth was Fergusen thinking when he started with Carrick and Giggs alone. No natural destroyer combined with pressing only for 10 minutes ? Come on. This is a CL final and all he can do was to play the same way he would play Wolves ? Guardiola would have licked his lips seeing the lineup.

This game once again showed how Mourinho got the tactics superbly right in the 4 classicos. 2DMs, one box-box midfielder combined with 3 attackers was a perfect combination and barcelona could not score many goals when there were 11 in the pitch. (Those barcelona fundamentalists complaining against fouling, get a break.. Football is a contact sport and if you want noone to touch your 5 feet footballers, go and play it in another planet. Atleast there is a referee to punish fouling, who punished the playactors in barcelona ? )

Barcelona forces opponents to be reactive and hence Mourinho had the most success againt them. It is not negative according to me because keeping the possession for 75% of the time is also in a way negative since you dont allow the opposition to play. Arsenal almost won against them with a similar tactics although people blamed them for not having a shot on goal when they did not need to.

All that said, Barcelona always faces maximum problems from wide plays and the team that has good wingers can be the team that has the best possible chance to win against them. A defensively reinforced Bayern with Robben and Ribery on both sides ? (with their current defense, it will be a joke). Teams have repeatedly failed to attack the barcelona full back positions so far and when Madrid scored against them, all the goals were scored by attacking the wide side. Hence Robben can be handy and he has repeatedly forced teams to double up on him to keep him quiet. That will pull Busquets out of position to help the struglging left back. In the same way, Ribery (although he is not so good as he was some years back) can be handy against Alves and can be used to block the latter’s runs forwards. That combined with a pacey forward like Olic and Muller behind can be a good combination to try out.

Peter on May 30, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Folks who hold up Inter’s model last year against Barca need to remember that Barca were playing around Ibrahimovitz (who notoriously ran less than Valdez in one game, reportedly), Messi was off, especially in the first tie, Milito goal was way offside, Iniesta was absent, Barca were naively attacking too much in the first tie, Busquets wasn’t protecting the back four like he should have (probably because of Iniesta’s absence), and legit Barca goal was disallowed in the second tie. Also, Alves denied clear penalty shout in first tie after tackle from Sjneider in the area. That’s not even mentioning the best save of the tournament that year from Julio Cezar to deny a sublime Messi curler in the second tie. Mourinho will hold that result as the managerial masterpiece of his career, but his Inter side went through by the absolute skin of their teeth. And that was a marvellous Inter side, at full strength, playing against a Barca team who were not.

The truth is that if Barcelona play near to their full potential, like we pretty much saw on Saturday, they are truly unplayable. And they got two perfect ten players to boot in Xavi and Messi, when there isn’t another team on the planet that can boast even one perfect 10 player. Xavi completely astounded me again in this game. His speed of thought, his control, and his ability to follow through on his vision. He is a genius player. His passing is as close to perfection as you can get in the modern game. I know he is 31, but I hope he continues in this vein for years to come. He mentioned somewhere that he thinks he can continue for some time, because his game isn’t a high intensity one. What a pleasure it is to watch his simple, yet incredibly incisive way of playing. He is the purists’ purist.

I think one of the ways Barca can continue to develop so they can cope with teams who will try to man-mark Xavi is to continue the development of Busquets as a more all-round playmaker. That will ensure that if Xavi does get man-marked, Busquets and him can just swop positions, upsetting the shape of the opposition even more (because man-marking will almost always upset your shape).

Possible world XI that could possibly stop Barcelona (excluding goalkeeper:

Nesta

Ivanovic Thiago

Pepe

Yaya Toure Wilshire

Sjneider

Kuyt Eto’o

Tevez

All extreme hard workers who can follow instructions but also improvise when the situation demands it. If you wanna beat Barca, you need to start with the template that all of your players will have to defend and your forwards will have to press vigorously, just like Barcelona does. I’ll have Nesta as a sweeper, because despite being old, he is an old style Italian defender who will know what the sweeper role requires, and Pepe as an advanced stopper/DM. A back four for sure, comprised only of centre backs and a sweeper. A diamond in the middle with the midfielders, and Kuyt and Eto’o wide up front to subdue the full backs. Tevez can harry the central defenders and double up on Busquets if Sjneider needs help.

And try to injury Messi, Iniesta and Xavi in minute 1, pray for 0-0.
This is Mourinho next year’s tactic.

marck on May 30, 2011 at 2:49 pm

Yawn… another Barcelona fanboy claiming nonsense.. Any team can claim that they will win when they are at their ‘best’. United can also claim that they were not at their ‘best’. Truth is best team on the day wins and this applies to all teams and to Barcelona. Stop demeaning other teams and other players who are equally good but does not play for Barcelona.

Along with your list on Inter, you had forgotten the 2 clear wrong offside calls against Milito in the first game. Everyone knows what kind of form he was in that year and he would have scored atleast once against valdes in one-on-one. But barcelona fanboys dont remember the decisions that favoured them.

And FYI, Real have already coped with them this year apart from the first match and some stupid refereeing.

“Mourinho will hold that result as the managerial masterpiece of his career, but his Inter side went through by the absolute skin of their teeth. And that was a marvellous Inter side, at full strength, playing against a Barca team who were not. ”

Ha ha, lol!! Don’t cry Mourinho hater.. We saw the almost same Inter side got thrashed by a certain Schalke from mid table Bundesliga. Mourinho need not explain to anyone about his skills. His record speaks for himself.

May be it is Guardiola and Barcelona players who need to play and coach for different teams to show that they can adapt and play at the same level. Not Mourinho or Schneider or Robben who have showed their skills in different teams, different leagues and in different tactics. This so called ‘Best midfield’ will be the ‘Best’ only with Barcelona. If they move on to another team that does not have so much possession, they wont succeed so much because none of them are good in defense. We saw how many goals Messi scored in the WC without Xavi and Iniesta behind him and how many goals Xavi and Iniesta created without Messi up front. We also saw Spain scraped through most of the matches with 1-0 scorelines with Villa scoring bulk of them.

So, stop patronizing them as saints. They have been beaten and will be beaten in the future. A naive fergusen failed to put up a fight and chose a tactics that was only helpful to chase shadows. Not everyone will do that.

Peter on May 30, 2011 at 4:10 pm

Now that Mourinho has dispatched of the his nemesis Valdano, he is truly in control at Madrid and we will now see what he can do with that squad. My feeling? He is going to take Madrid to the Dark Side for sure. He is a bad loser, and a purely reactive coach blessed with more attacking talent than he deserves.

Not a Barcelona fanboy; just enjoy their football. Arsenal fan actually, but had little to be sxcited about this year. I think it is fair to say that Barcelona has captured the imagination of millions of football fans the world over.

I’ll be candid: dislike Mourinho, although he can be a good coach, against attacking teams that is (don’t mention Benitez near him); hate Madrid!

marck on May 31, 2011 at 6:29 am

“He is a bad loser, and a purely reactive coach blessed with more attacking talent than he deserves”

Ha ha.. RM has scored more than 100 goals this season and yet he is purely a reactive coach ? I would rather chose a coach who has the tactical astuteness to adjust according to different playing conditions and opposition than a one game wonder like barcelona who keep doing the same thing again and again. If the refereeing was anywhere close to standard in the semifinals in 09 and 11, this barcelona would not have reached finals at all and won against a naive Fergusen side.

His stint at RM shall be his greatest challenge for there is no bigger club side in the world (and this is coming from a lifelong Barcelona fan). RM hired him specifically as the anti-christ, sorry, anti-Barca. They have sent Valdano to the streets and gave him literally full control of the organization. I certainly do hope that he will achieve something significant next year lest RM turns into a half a billion dollar joke of the century. Despite all of his achievements his teams are all so forgetful – the man’s only legacy is to leave a path of hate and destruction. If he fails at RM I cannot imagine what will become of him.

Unfortunately he has not only the best club side in the world in the same league but also his ultimate nemesis – Pep, oh and let’s not forget he’ll also be going against UNICEF, UEFA, the Qatar Foundation, the Freemasons, Fox News and everything and anything enigmatic including the supposed last dinosaur of the Congo.

Crap. I forgot De Jong. Maybe I’ll use him in the second half as subsitute

Juan Carlos on May 31, 2011 at 6:31 am

But your inclusion of Balotelli was certainly superb ;D

Alf on May 30, 2011 at 3:32 pm

With that mentality and line-up against Barcelona you will be worse off than Mourinho and lucky to end the match with 7 players.

When will peple realize that the only way to beat Barcelona is like Shakhtar tried to do: ATTACK! Parking the bus, defending with aggression, fielding several destroyers, etc. will only end in Barca’s favor unless you can find a blind ref like the one in charge of the Copa del Rey.

Here’s a novel idea: Practice football and then play football against them. If you can’t handle playing football straight up, then just forfeit instead of ruining the game.

I was merely joking. Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira playing together…why did noone laugh and people take this line-up very seriously?

ira on May 30, 2011 at 8:23 pm

> If you can’t handle playing football straight up, then just forfeit instead of ruining the game.

Finally someone gets it. Real Madrid was lucky not to finish all the clasicos with 8, or even 7, men.

Peter on May 30, 2011 at 4:16 pm

Thanks for your thoughts, Satria. Interesting line-up that, although most of those players aren’t active anymore. Here’s another thought: wwhich teams from history, that actually existed, do you think could take Barcelona on on equal footing? I’d love to see someone talk about the great Milan team of the late eighties. Who do you think would be victorious for instance if the teams of the holy trinities of Xavi/Iniesta/Messi and Van Basten/Gullit/Rijkaard ever faced off in football heaven?

“The truth is that if Barcelona play near to their full potential, like we pretty much saw on Saturday, they are truly unplayable.
And they got two perfect ten players to boot in Xavi and Messi, when there isn’t another team on the planet that can boast even one perfect 10 player.”

If you want to beat Barcelona, then you have to possess TWO ten players in your team. I would like to choose the Brazil ‘06 with its fantastic four of Ronaldinho – Kaka – Ronaldo – Adriano. Of course, they should all be playing ‘at their prime’ and during that World Cup 06 they played nowhere their uncanny skills, especially Ronaldinho. Considering this is the national team and a once-in-four-year event, they also rarely played together. Compare that with Messi-Xavi-Iniesta-Pedro-Busquets who have been playing together for like, what, 8 years since Messi was 15?

Also, you could not play 4-4-2 against Barcelona. Simply can’t. No hope at all. So that Brazil 4-4-2 formation (or even close to 4-2-4!) would be overran easily in the center of the pitch.

The best team to match current Barca, you ask Peter? Real Madrid. Not today’s Real Madrid, but Real Madrid ‘02, with the likes of Makalele and Guti marshalling in front of the defence, and Zidane, Raul, and Figo supporting Ronaldo upfront. Here are the reasons:

1. They use a 4-2-3-1 formation -a perfect set-up to nullify Barca
2. Zidane is one of the few humans who can match Xavi. You can even put Zidane deeper to help Madrid control possession. Oh and there we have Makelele (anchorman who could kill Xavi and mark Iniesta) and Guti (Zidane’s assistant in possession) too to help him
3. Ronaldo has the pace, Figo has the flair, and Raul has the movement to exploit Barca’s somewhat ’shaky’ defenders. Perfect combination upfront.
4. Don’t forget that this team possessed Hierro, ROBERTO CARLOS (Ferguson must wish he has him instead of Evra to stop Messi), and Michel Salgado -all in their prime.

Peter on May 30, 2011 at 6:12 pm

That’s not a bad idea, Satria. The only problem with that team was that neither Figo, Zidane, Raul, or even Guti, but especially Ronaldo defended much, nor pressed much. To face Barca on as equal a footing as possible, you need your whole team to be conscious of defensive duties at all times.

Also, I would say that at that stage, Zidane and Ronaldo were a little past their prime, whereas Messi, Iniesta and Xavi are absolutely at their prime at the moment, and even better as a unit. I wouldn’t trust Guti with defensive duties too much. The formation might be ideal, but you’d have to drill defensive mindsets into Figo et al, which few managers would be able to manage. Makalele would be able able to deal with one of Xavi and Iniesta, maybe even both, but definitely not the Trio together when Messi drops deep. That said, I think such a hypothetical match would be close, simply due to the talent that Madrid had at that stage, but the egos together would complicate matters. Every Barca player plays for one another, whereas I don’t know if that was case at Madrid.

I think Barca against “the best defense of all time,” namely Milan’s group of Tassotti, Costacurta, Baresi and Maldini would have really struggled. Then again, that team played roughly a 4-4-2 as well, but then again Gullit would drop into midfield to help Rikaard and Ancelotti in a way that Rooney didn’t in the final. I think the hypothetical matchup between these two dream teams would be the football match to end all football matches. Also, that Milan team knew how to press, so you’d effectively have a war zone fought over roughly a third of the pitch’s size. I think Milan would just edge it, because their back four was so awesome. There, I said it.

ProFF7 on June 1, 2011 at 6:21 pm

Quite frankly, I think if ‘02 Galacticos were matched against today’s Barcelona, they would be so utterly humilliated it would go in the history books. They are exactly the kind of team Barca like to prey.

That Real Madrid was a brilliant team when they had the ball, extremely fast and with scary finishing, but their lack of defending and pressing attitude was a big weak point. Against Barça, as any other team, they would struggle to get the ball back, with neither Ronaldo Figo Guti or Zidane being players that would press high on Barca, which is a vital task, and in the midfield Makelele would be quite alone in destructive tasks.

Of course Zidane is one of the best players of history, but he alone, even if paired with Guti,doesnt guarantee possession against a team like Barcelona, that almost every player is trained from childhood for the purpose of holding the ball.

I fear that with only 30% of ball possession, madrid attack and midfield would be isolated and Barcelona would play circles around them as we have seen so many times. Being a team with little physicality, Madrid would exhaust both physically and mentally running after the ball, specially since they were a very offensive minded side. They would be privated from their game, and be forced to defend

No, sorry, I dont see Galacticos Madrid even scratching Barcelona side, and I see a lot of historical teams that would fare better against them than Madrid. If any team in history would be capable of having a fair chance against them, it would be Sacchi’s Milan with its impressive discipline, and agressive but technical midfield. And even then, I think Barcelona would win 60-70% of their matches against them, which is probably the better one can hope…

3rnald0 on May 30, 2011 at 10:43 pm

barca would win every time, not because barca are 100 times better but because has football has evolved immensely in terms of tactics.

Peter on May 31, 2011 at 8:43 am

I’m not so convinced. Anyways, my hypothesis hinges on if those players played today. I think if Baresi’s career was happening now, or Gullit or Van Basten, they’d be top, top players, amongst the best, because a great player is always a great player. They’d of course have the requisite fitness and be familiar with the tactical innovations of the day. The skills and mentality that made them top players would set them apart, I believe. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to imagine that.

I think in the modern game if you have the fitness, you can fit in. Someone like Puskas obviously wouldn’t, but then again he might have, you never know. A fantastic first touch still goes a long way. Just look at the kind of player Berbatov was at the beginning of the season, simply because he worked on his fitness in the off-season while the World Cup was happening.

I read in World Soccer magazine once that the Brazilian team that competed in the 1970 World Cup was so fit and to a member so drilled that one of the members of the squad can’t even remember if anyone ever went to the side of the pitch for a drink of water, even in the Mexican heat. I think with that level of physical form, any of the class of 1970 would be super valuable today and could excel. I don’t think there is a defender alive today who is as good as Beckenbauer was, in terms of tactical awareness, skill, cunning and pure talent. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that.

Certainly a good game but a very one-sided match, too. Man United relied on Giggs in Midfield, ignoring the fact that he is not good at sitting deep and despite his good domestic form, getting a bit old now. Carrick always has a few good games followed by matches where he is hardly visible and his presence not felt at all on the pitch. What was the role Valencia was playing? A wide player or a destroyer? It looked he adopted the latter one as he clattered into people and was lucky just to receive a yellow card. Many of his challenges seemed clumsy to say the least. He is not a creator but a good right of left back. Anyway the Catalans are worthy winners and have set the standards to an incredible high, even if they might not have been at their best on Saturday.

Alf on May 30, 2011 at 3:22 pm

United’s offensive tactic consisted of sending long, high balls up top to Chicharito and Rooney the majority of the game.

The other 2 methods of attack I have seen them employ in other matches include sending Valencia down the wing or countering down the middle. Valencia was neutralized by Abidal (who did phenomenal at closing down him down and making him look very overrated). Busquets/Pique/Masch were excellent ball-winners and the entire Barca team pressured United so that the only option they had was to hit the long balls. This tactic failed miserably for several reasons. One, Chicharito is a poacher striker, not a ball winner like Drogba. Two, as the lone striker he rarely had any support so he would end up passing it backwards to no avail. Three, Barca’s defensive line did a superb job at the offsides trap (Hernandez was called at least 6 times that I counted).

United should be extremely grateful they were able to nick a goal considering that was one of the only decent chances they created all game. Pep’s defensive tactics were precisely tuned for this United formation and showed just how feeble this type of attack is. It may work for Chelsea and other EPL teams in the Premier League but it was worthless against a defensive line up that had only played 90 minutes together previously but had good tactical advice.

Fernando on May 30, 2011 at 7:16 pm

I don’t understand why teams that play Barca never try to break their possession game. I know it is easier said that done, but I’m sure a decent set of defenders and midfielders could be trained to receive a goal kick pass from their keeper and then play keep away in their own half from Barca’s pressing forwards for long enough to tire the forwards and dissuade them from their pressing. You do this a few times to start the game (the first few goal-kicks you get) and you set the tone that their forwards pressing your defence is a waste of energy for them as it will only end in a game of keep away.

Surely there have to be at least a few sides in world football that can play keep away for 5-10 minutes? Particularly in their own half when the sole goal was keep away and not necessarily advancing the ball.

If you are able to do this, not only will that then give you much more possession, which even if it is in your own half it keeps Barca away from the ball, but it also gives your defenders more time on the ball to actually plan attacks and not just kick the ball up to an offside Chichatiro every time they are put under a little bit of pressure.

Barca are an amazing team in all aspects of the game, but their principal advantage is psychological: they have convinced opponents that when they (opponents) have the ball in their own half and are pressed by villa or pedro the only option is to kick it forward and return the ball to Barca.

BerkeleyBernie on May 31, 2011 at 4:48 am

Many La Liga teams, throughout the table, are technical and possession-oriented like Barça, and do indeed try to work the ball out of the back against them, and often succeed- they just aren’t quite as good at it as Barça. The “kicking it forward” is just more a generally accepted EPL tactic, and works well enough against other EPL teams who play the same.

3rnald0 on May 30, 2011 at 9:25 pm

i agree with you that it is certainly possible to beat barca for possession football. And teams shouldnt think barca will dominate possession before a ball is kicked. However thinking you’ll lose possession is only realistic if you dont have a plan to beat them in possession, but barca CAN be beaten possession-wise…although i think im the only person in the world who knows this, so sharing such knowledge is too valuable! but here are some clues:

. You have to have a formation (shape) where it is possible to press every single barcelona player instantly (excluding 1 centre back) – no team has done this so far this season due to messi’s false 9 movement giving barca numerical advantages all over the pitch.
. Your central midfielders (who touch the ball the most) must have top ball rentention, hence allowing your team to keep the ball significantly better under pressure as opposed to just energetic midfielders with average ball retention.
. You need to have disciplined players in every single position. This means discipline in terms of the press. E.g theres no point playing a high profle player if he isnt motivated to press the opposition aggressively – e.g. ronaldo. Lack of press = less possession.
. Your teams playing style has to be correct. E.g no point playing direct long balls as this will result in less possession. almost every pass must be short (creating less risk of losing the ball), but for this to be possible there must be atleast 1 spare player available; and so the formation must allow this to happen.
. Your defensive line must be high enough to compress space, but not so high it is suicidal. Inter demonstrated this to perfection when they thrashed barca in the first leg semi final last season.

It’s particularly interesting to note on the 1st play of the video, it’s a 3 on 3 in midfield, and after 5 passes and movement without the ball, all 3 Barcelona players are free past the 3 United midfielders. That’s great footballl… but also some really bad defending.

Peter on May 31, 2011 at 9:12 am

I think the only way to have a real shot at beating Barcelona when it matters is to get used to facing them on the field first. I believe the only reason Inter defeated Barcelona last year is because they faced them twice in the group stages first. That’s the way Mourinho likes it because the Reactive One really had a tangible template to work with when he faced the Catalans again, this time in the much more crucial tie of the semi-finals. I’m sure everyone remembers how humiliated by Barca Inter were in the group stages. They sat way too deep, hardly pressed at all and allowed the Barcelona players to run riot around them in the space that was afforded them. Barca only scored twice in those two ties I believe, but that is because they had the Immobile Object in Ibrahimovic to play around.

This year too, when Real Madrid, under new manager Mourinho went in naked against Barcelona, they were shelacked. Real of course did much better later on in the season, and it helped them too that by the time those four clasicos rolled around, Barca were pretty much on edge due to physical and mental fatigue, caused by their small squad.

I think it is absolutely crucial that you get used to dealing with them on the pitch. Even Arsenal did better this year because they faced Barcelona twice last year. Anyone remember the first half at the Emirates last year? You can prepare beforehand all you want, but if you don’t have actual experience in dealing with the movement and technique of Busquets, Iniesta, Messi and Xavi, and the continual threat of Alves, you have no chance. It was too long since Manchester United faced Barca (two years) and in that time the Catalans had evolved to become an even more maniacally pressing side. I’m sure Fergie used video evidence to get his players used to what they were going to face and drilled and drilled and prepared like crazy, but if you aren’t used to what you’re going to face on the pitch, especially with a more rested and sharp Barca squad… well, we know what happened.

Nick on May 31, 2011 at 1:56 pm

Awesome video.

Varun on May 31, 2011 at 3:55 pm

Its by Allas guy, he does these and other Barca vids, really great.

ZM needs to start going video route, Text+Images ain’t gonna work in 2011 with this sort of competition

The problem is, you’re not legally allowed to use video footage. That’s why Allas’ channel is deleted by youtube every couple of months…

3rnald0 on June 1, 2011 at 12:00 am

his analysis isnt very good anyway

Neil on May 30, 2011 at 11:05 pm

What you would need to beat Barcelona is fast players. that’s it. Real Madrid have got a few fast players, and they almost had done it. the refereeing was questionable at times, but RM werent in tune to the tactic yet but they will probably have it down next season.

nobody on the barcelona team is fast. messi is fast but he is the best player in the universe so its not a surprise. if you press tight and compact, force them together and dont get caught diagonally you can then run through them. even their defence isn’t fast, Mascherano, Puyol, etc.

They keep the ball, that’s the key. if you dont have the ball you cant score. the key is to get the ball = speed.

however if Barca sign some fast players they will keep winning everything.

Real Madrid tried to play football: 0-5
Man United tried to play football: 1-3

Just in case you are wondering, playing football here defined as “not just trying to get 11 players behind the ball, tackle hard, and slash ankles”. United was simply the better team than Madrid. Get over with it, guys.

Qwe on May 31, 2011 at 3:27 am

Well, considering that the Rooney goal would have been called offside 4 out of 5 times and the fact that Barca created enough good scoring opportunities to get 7 or 8, I’d say RM and Man United were equally bad. The scoreline only tells a part of the story.

marck on May 31, 2011 at 5:59 am

Oh yes.. you forgot the blind referees in the semifinals in 09 and 11 when barca were literally given the game in plate by not giving penalties and by sending off opposition players.

Juan Carlos on May 31, 2011 at 7:38 am

He really must have been blind when he sent Abidal off for nothing in 09, and even blinder when he let Lass on the pitch after 8 fouls some weeks ago.

neiloc on May 31, 2011 at 8:00 am

Lots of discussion above about Rooney picking up Busquets etc. What you have to consider is that this Barcelona team are happy to recieve the ball in a tight space whereas an English Premier midfield player only wants the ball when he’s in 5 metre of space, in England you can stop someone wanting the ball by standing within 2-3 metres of someone, this doesn’t work with Barcelona, they take the ball in tighter spaces than other teams to deter them you have to get really tight and English managers are averse to anything akin to man marking.

The key thing i’d do to stop Barcelona, and I’m not saying it would work, but it would be the best way of giving my team a chance of winning would be to play with a very high defensive line to congest the pitch. This would make you vulnerable to players running onto through balls into the space behind you, but I’d rather lose trying to play them on your terms than to meekly surrender in the way Manchester United did on Saturday.

DOF on May 31, 2011 at 1:56 pm

Then I’m afraid english football isn’t gonna be winning much in future unless/until Mourinho return to England.

KJK1LL3R on May 31, 2011 at 10:47 am

I hope Bielsa takes charge at Sevilla, would love to see how his 3-3-1-3 would fair against Barca. He would definately take the game to Barca.

Video Analysis of the match, done by Allas.
ZM needs to start doing this if he is to survive,

Video is always going to trump Text and some still jpg’s, no offense.

Neil on May 31, 2011 at 3:45 pm

i guess the thing is, great teams are built on good defences. good organized and clean defence is the first key to success. So people who like tactics and seem like they like Mourinho or Inter or Madrid and not Barcelona or Spain (youll notice they dont flame on Arsenal or Argentinian clubs) see that Mourinho has the defence part down. Then he needs a good fluid attack. He hasnt done this, but its probably his brief at R.Madrid. Its about time he started attacking !! i dont have anything against attacking. Arsenal play attack and i like Arsenal.

(only thing is Arsenal can’t defend (well this late 2000s-early2010s team) and its a joke. Their GK keeps changing (and is dire anyway, the young guy Szceszseny looks good actually, but … will they win a Prem or CL with him) and their centre backs are just dire, sorry, they’re just dire. Utterly dire. Lost 3-1 at Stoke just there and didnt even looked like they cared. Djourou’s given away more pens than he has made tackles. Squillaci looks like he doesnt care, Vermaelen is good but injured and Koscielny is just redcard material. None of them have good positioning either. Their fullbacks are good but constantly linked to moves away and you think its just a matter of time.)

But! Barcelona dont give the other team the ball, so they cant score. What’s positive and pro-active about that? they make 1,000 passes a minute or whatever but how many are forward passes? They don’t make too many forward runs. They dive a lot.

However, they win by a lot of goals usually, they have the best player in the world, their passing is accurate and their club is set up in a vaguely left-wing way (no shirt sponsors etc) and they are likeable. Guardiola is also in the top 3 coaches of the world IMO.

But just to say; you’re not a Better person because you like Barca or attacking footy. How naive is that? I just believe a firm defence is key to winning, then a good attack on top of that. My reference point is Sacchi’s Milan. Great defence, but a great attack. Brain Clough (an offensive coach) acknowledged that Peter Shilton was his key signing. Because the team knows they won’t let in a goal, so they just need to score a couple. With your team knowing all they need to do is score, that is “positive” and “pro active” in your mindset.

starving the opposition of possesion ends the contest, diving to get possesion back is cheating and sideways passes aren’t positive football. Sorry to burst your bubble but the defensive people aren’t negative; they want Perfect football. Good defensively and offensively. Little teams have to defend first before attacking; it’s the first stage of success. Once it is perfected, attacking can resume. We all love attacking football, of course. Some of us enjoy a great defensive display also though.

Peter on June 1, 2011 at 9:37 am

Hi there. Interesting comment. My response to the folks who complain about Barca’s sideways passes and stinginess with the ball is that if all teams could play this way, they would, but there’s no team in football at the moment, perhaps ever, blessed with such technical players in the middle of the park.

Barca’s game is based on control. They control the game, because they can. They control what they do, and they even control what the opposition does, because the opposition can only really respond. It is a form of defence and attack. Barca usually spends the majority of the game in the opposition half, where they scale the size of the pitch down to almost only a third. This way they can also conserve their energy.

I watched Spain and Portugal practice before their match in the World Cup at the Cape Town Stadium; the Portuguese players were running laps and stretching and looked quite relaxed, while Ronaldo was alone on my side of the pitch, practicing his step-overs and his free kicks and generally left on his own, except when he needed someone to go up against. It looked very disjointed. The Spain players on the other half of the pitch demarcated a mini pitch for themselves, roughly a quarter of the size of one half of a pitch, and just pinged the ball crazily quickly between one another. Even their practices were done as a unit. You could tell before the match had even started who was gonna win.

For fans who love the defensive, I guess more strategic side of the game, you’d be hard pressed to find too many teams in the world that are as drilled as the Barcelona players are. No team, perhaps ever, defends like these guys do from the front, and as a unit.

I maintain that in order to stand a chance of beating Barca, you need all of the players in your team to be mindful of defensive duties. Mourinho likes to play with an out and out striker at Real, and I have often felt that that is a mistake; guys like Gonzalo Higuaín, Benzima and even Ronaldo just do not like tracking back. They will press occasionally in a match, but not even close to the almost obsessive levels of Pedro, Villa and Messi, who to a man never relents throughout a game. We even saw during the Champs League final that Rooney’s appetite for defensive duties is limited, and this is an attacking player renowned for his defensive abilities. The Barca players can usually maintain their levels just fine in any individual match, but is it any surprise that fatigue became such a factor towards the end of the season for Barca? That relentless pressing must be incredibly tiring during the course of a whole season. I think that is why Pedro, and especially Villa, who is not used to this degree of pressing over the course of a season, became goalscoring shadows of their former selves in the last dozen or so weeks of the season. To do what they do and still be expected to score boat loads of goals is a heavy ask, but you can’t imagine they ever complained. Because this Barca team is exactly that, a team that plays for one another. That is the one thing that most teams won’t be able to replicate, especially teams that throw a crap load of money at any and all problems. Solidarity like that cannot be bought.

Again with Madrid: Mourinho doesn’t have Pep Guardiola’s ability, I don’t think, to transform players into what he wants. Mascherano can now be considered a centre half as well, legit. Mourinho wouldn’t be able to play with a false nine, because he never has in his career. Benzima can operate as a false nine because he drops so deep, but that doesn’t suit Mourinho’s style of controlling every aspect of his team, even his players’ thoughts. A false nine, as Messi, Van Persie and Rooney has proven over the years, can be a very valuable asset, but Mourinho is too by the numbers to even consider that, it would seem. A false nine would be valuable against Barca, I believe, but Mourinho is too much of a vanilla, reactive coach to really be inventive with the players he has at his disposal.

I think fans who value the defensive side of the game as much as the attacking side will find plenty to love about this Barca team. Everything they do, even the sideways passes, has purpose. And they can achieve, more than any team in history, the one thing that all teams aspire to: control a match as much as is humanly possible in a competitive situation.

Mourinho himself once said that there is no such thing as attacking teams, or defensive teams; only functional and dysfunctional teams. The club I support, Arsenal, is a prime example of a dysfunctional team, where you just know something isn’t right.

Barnesy10 on June 1, 2011 at 2:51 pm

All excellent points. Guardiola, through the process of La Masia, has the rare luxury of the world’s best player subjugating himself for the benefit of the team. For all their wonderful players Barca function because of Guardiola: his system, his tactics, his way or back to Italy you go. To watch these great players commit so comprehensively to Pep’s vision is incredible and only goes to show that a whole team believing and committing to a manager’s ideal will always surpass that of a decent side peppered with stars.

The manager is the most important person at any successful club, so it will be interesting to see how this Barcelona perform once Guardiola has decided to call it a day.

Excellent comment once more bro. But I have to disagree a little: Mourinho was experimenting in some players. Remember Eto’o? Striker turned into (defensive) side midfielder. Davide Santon? Right back became left back. Khalid Bouhlarouz? Centre back became right back.

And let’s not forget that Mourinho was the one who deployed Pepe so high in midfield during El Clasico -yes Pepe used to play in defensive midfield in Portugal, but in Real Madrid he has been comfortably playing as centre-back for years.

Otherwise, great points all you have there. Where’re you from? Are you an English? What city?

Peter on June 3, 2011 at 9:02 am

Hey Satria. I’m from South Africa, if you’re still around on this here forum.

3rnald0 on June 1, 2011 at 8:23 pm

kaka would play the false 9 sooo well for real. Benzema wouldn’t because his passing and creativity isn’t as good as kaka’s.

RMJ on May 31, 2011 at 3:58 pm

United were over run in midfeild plain and simple. We were in it till the end of the first half when fergie could have/should have rung teh changes of putting on Fletcher or anybody in place of giggsy who was just did’nt know what he was doing in there. But even still Barca are en-route to becoming probably the greatest club side of this era

plyka on June 1, 2011 at 5:17 am

I think the problem with this final was that Man U simply aren’t a dominant team right now. Let’s not mistake this Man U team with the one that lost to Barca in the finals 2 years ago. Even though that United team lost just as this one, that was a dominant team while this one was a pretty weak one.

Barca played a great game without their usual cheating. But then again, they didn’t need to cheat to win this one. Barca use cheating as a STRATEGY, they fake direct strikes to the face, that is, they fake red card worthy events and then have 8-9 players rush the ref in order to get the advantage of playing 11 vs 10. However, they don’t employ these tactics against Almeria, why would they? Almeria is a weak team and cheating is not necessary. And i don’t mean to confuse a team like United, a great franchise, with Almeria, but this year’s United were just not on the level of Barca, and thus Barca didn’t cheat to win.

However, against Arsenal, who played this Barca far better than United did, Barca did need to cheat. They dived and rushed the ref on every occassion possible, surrounding him with 8-9 players. At the point that Barca were down 3-2 on agg, and needing 2 goals to go through with only 40 minutes left in regulation, their cheating tactics (in this case diving earlier in the match and pressuring the ref with 8-9 players) finally worked and the ref made a horrible error. He kicked Van Persie off for “time wasting.” I mean, c’mon, what a ridiculous call to make in such a situation. This strategy by Barca is only employed when needed.

The year prior, down 3-1 on agg to Inter, they employed the same tactic, which got Motta sent off by a disgraceful Biscuits dive plus 8-9 players rushing the ref. Unfortunately for Barca, and fortunately for football, their cheating did not work, and they still lost 3-2 on agg.

Everyone remembers this year’s Madrid fiasco. After the CDR loss, Barca felt threatened. In the CL semis first leg, it was a 0-0 tie, Barca made ZERO real threats on goal. The diving and cheating in that game was absolutely insane. Although Madrid did not dive, they also did rush the ref which is despicable. But it was nothing like Barca, faking direct strikes to the face on 3-4 occasions. Pedro running into Arbealoa with a shoulder, and then clutching his face in agony (getting Arbealoa only a yellow card thankfully), Biscuits on more than one occasion, after no contact whatsoever, some of the best acting imaginable, clutching his face in agony. He later threw racial slurs at Marcelo in an attempt to rile him up further. All along, rushing the ref with 8-9 players in an attempt to gain the advantage of playing 11 vs 10, because they couldn’t score on Madrid in any other way.

Eventually these cheating tactics worked, Alves not even getting touched while fighting for a 50/50 ball with Pepe, fell to the ground, rolled over 3-4 times while 8-9 Barca players rushed the ref. Pepe gets a ridiculous red card, and finally Barca are able to “play their game” and score. Remember, it was the 60th minute and Barca had not even threatened the goal, it was 0-0. If that game finishes 0-0, and the 2nd leg, played 11 on 11, finishes as it did, 1-1, Madrid goes through. But no team is good enough to play 10 men against an 11 man Barca and so they prevailed.

The most disgusting thing about Barca’s tactics is that they seem premeditated. They don’t employ their cheating UNLESS it is necessary, unless they are on the verge of elimination. I have a theory that if Man United would have scored first, we would have seen these tactics. But Barca never felt threatened, and so they didn’t deem it necessary to cheat.

It’s horrible that a team like this is getting positive praise from the media….but what are you going to do? It’s the media, they don’t report as much as they regugitate the company line.

Jeremy on June 1, 2011 at 9:35 am

Tosh.

Peter on June 1, 2011 at 9:55 am

Your memory is conveniently short, plyka . Barca had threatened the Madrid goal at least twice. Villa’s effort from outside the box was just wide, and Casillas made a great save from Xavi, who was slipped through by a disguised Messi pass.

I do not approve of Barca’s play-acting, but let’s not forget Di Maria’s tactics as well, to name one, who dived whenever he could. It was just a cynical game from two teams who absolutely despise one another.

I get annoyed with people who say that Madrid would have won if Pepe hadn’t been sent off. I agree that the red card was super harsh, probably unfair, but that was a dangerous “attempted” tackle and he deserved at least a yellow, which would have curbed his defensive exploits for much of that game. Also, the kind of player he is, in a super high pressure situation and with Barca’s superior technical players, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t have been sent of later on, or at least sacrificed by Mourinho to prevent that from happening. Just like the Dutch coach in the final, Mourinho clearly believes the best way to play against these players is with thuggish break-up play skirting the line of sending offs to unsettle Xavi and co. They’re used to it by now.

Pep was quite clever in this game; his team wasn’t attacking desperately. They just maintained possession, in their proactive, defensive way, so it was made to look like they were playing and Madrid weren’t, which of course riled the Madrid fans, who by now has a major inferiority complex. Pep thus ensured that this was a high pressure situation for the home team as well, almost negating their home advantage. Is it any surprise Ronaldo, who feeds off of the enthusiasm of the crowd (I have seen this live) became so annoyed and frustrated? I think Pep, who has more experience with El Clasico, both as manager and player, out-thought Mourinho, plain and simple.

Barnesy10 on June 1, 2011 at 2:37 pm

Can’t disagree with what you say, but this is the same with most teams. This behaviour is ingrained in the Latin footballing cultures; so Madrid, Porto, Milan et al, would all employ the same tricks. Although there is less of the overt simulation within the British game the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool etc. aren’t above “rushing the referee with 8-9 players” if the match isn’t going in their favour.

It’s an unsavoury part of the game, but in no way is it exclusive to FC Barcelona. I assume the main reason for the opprobrium heaped on them is that they’re the most analysed side at present; and that this type of behaviour is at odds with their smug self-proclamations. Take Pique post Utd: “We don’t time waste or dive, we just play football.” Utter bollocks, and these sort of protestations only serve to make Mr. Shakira look a complete tool.

I doubt that Alves’, Busquets’ or Mascherano’s antics cause too much concern on the continent where this sort of play is completely normal; but for Barca to be loved on these Isles then they probably need to cut that sort of thing out. In saying that, I doubt that the Blaugrana give a flying one about their standing in Britain, and besides, the organisations that really have a duty to sanction this behaviour are UEFA and FIFA. I, for one, won’t be holding my breath.